Electrical Engineering students Cristin Faria and Shelby Liddecoet participated in leading the Create-An-App Workshop on Friday, November 18, 2016, along with Computer Science students Brooke Borges, Dana Conard, and Hanani Ikeh. This outreach event is a part of the Women In Tech Program, an initiative to bring together and support current female students as well as to recruit more female students in the technology disciplines.
The workshop was fully run by the female students and was designed to allow anyone to create a mobile application for Androids using the MIT App Inventor software, even with no prior programming experience. The one-hour event was open to everyone from SSU and ran at full capacity with 22 participants, including SSU faculty members. Participants successfully created a Whack-A-Mole app, where players earn points if they tap on the moving mole, some even customizing their app.
“I really enjoyed the app class today. Thank you for putting the whole thing together! It was wonderful to see those smart young women running a computer science APP class!” said Dr. Wanda Boda, a faculty member in the Department of Kinesiology at SSU. Dr. Boda has taken what she’s learned from the class to introduce to her graduate class where the students were also able to create their own apps. “It has been a big hit around here,” she says.
“The students really did an amazing job in putting together this workshop,” says Women In Tech director Dr. Sara Kassis. “Considering where technology is going, everyone will eventually need to learn to program, and classes such as these are a fun way to begin.”
This workshop will be offered again a few times next semester due to popular demand. For any comments or questions, please contact Dr. Sara Kassis, Director of Women In Tech and workshop organizer.