Winter 2023: Community Outreach Cypress Bootcamp

During the winter quarter, WICS’ Outreach Committee worked with Cypress College and Magnolia High School students to embark on a 3-day boot camp filled with technical workshops, professional development, and team-building activities. The cohort of 11 girls learned a variety of skills deep-divided into topics that were completely new to them. 

Day 1 was held on January 28, where Outreach taught the basics of HTML and CSS, resulting in a final project of a recipe webpage. Day 2 on February 4 covered Game Development, where the students learned how to build a text-based game using Twine, and explored topics such as if-else statements, conditionals, variables, and incorporating CSS into the look of the game. The final day on February 11 was held at UCI. The outreach committee gave a tour of UCI with some very obscure fun facts and then proceeded to lead a professional development lesson about how to use the STAR method during interviews. The day concluded with a Shark Tank competition where the students crafted together a product using cardboard, construction paper, and other art materials, and pitched it to the audience. The winning product was a box that acted as a vending machine to release boxes with encouraging and heartfelt messages inside of them.