East Hill News: Cornell students share love of coding with younger generation

Each Sunday in a computer lab in Mann Library on the Cornell University campus, members of Women In Computing at Cornell (WICC) pass on their love of computer science by teaching coding to middle and high school students of all genders through the Girls Who Code program.

WICC is a vibrant community of women, gender minorities and allies that for more than a decade has provided mentorship, career development opportunities and local outreach to help diversify the tech workforce nationwide. Members often acknowledge that support from those farther up the career ladder has been critical to their success and are passionate about paying it forward to the next generation.

“We didn’t have a Girls Who Code program at my high school, which is why I was very excited to get involved here,” said Jasmine Samadi, WICC’s current co-president. “It is really fun to inspire this younger generation.”

The classes typically include about 30 students from Ithaca and five nearby school districts. Co-leaders give a short lecture and then the kids solve coding problems with the help of WICC mentors. Students also get free time to work on their own coding projects.

“We hope that they’re able to explore their imagination and put their passions into action,” Samadi said.

WICC began in 2013 through the efforts of Jisha Kambo, now a product leader at Loom, Atlassian. As a first-year student at Cornell, she was enjoying her computer science courses, but couldn’t envision a career as a programmer. Then she ran into two women computer science majors discussing their internships.

“It was so powerful for me to meet two women in CS and understand what working as a software engineer is like. They really inspired me,” Kambo said. “It made me start to see it as an actual possibility and eventually declare CS as my major.”

With help from Éva Tardos, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Science, Kambo sought out like-minded classmates, secured funding and founded WICC. The Girls Who Code classes began later that year, so that members could inspire a new generation of computer scientists.

WICC celebrated its 10th birthday last spring, with a dinner and panel discussion on diversity advances in the field, featuring Kambo, Tardos, Cornell President Martha E. Pollack, and Kavita Bala, dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

At the celebration, Kambo ran into two former students who had taken her Girls Who Code classes as DeWitt middle schoolers, Alice and Bella Hu. Later, the twin sisters enrolled at Cornell and joined WICC. They began volunteering for WICC’s coding classes in 2021, and Bella Hu co-lead classes for two years.

“Seeing them again truly helped me see the difference WICC made in these girls’ lives,” Kambo said.

Initially, their father signed them up for the classes, but the sisters happily attended throughout middle and high school.

Bella Hu said she was tremendously influenced by her WICC mentors. “Those students have become my role models,” she said. “I wanted to be that role model when I came to Cornell and be able to give back to the community.” She majored in information science, and after graduation this spring, will start a job as a data analyst at an accounting firm.

Alice Hu recalls that her WICC mentors passed on a wealth of college and career advice. She majored in biological sciences and plans to go on to medical school after graduation. She is considering pediatrics, due to her experience with young people through the program.

“We’re always looking forward to getting more kids involved, especially in this generation of AI and ChatGPT,” Alice Hu said. “We need more people to understand this stuff and its implications on the future.”

Middle and high school students of all genders interested in Girls Who Code classes can find more information on the WICC website.

Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.