During the holidays, it is important to give thanks to those that help make USF Computer Science the wonderful place that it is. This year, we were able to send over 30 students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, engage in a wide-range of research projects, and provide mentorship for many students thanks to the generosity of Craig Newmark.

To thank Craig for his continued support of our students, on Tuesday, November 27th, the Women in Tech student organization hosted a thank you celebration to highlight the amazing work of our students. See below for photos from this celebration.

Here are just some of the many ways our students and WiT are utilizing Craig’s gift:

• Host 1 – 2 field trips per year where students visit tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area and meet female engineers and computer scientists. Last year they visited Twitter and this year we will be visiting VMWare.
• Host panels with women in tech where they share their experiences and advice on being a female professional in this field.
• Carried out a semester-long career series for members’ professional development. Topics ranged from technical resume workshops to elevator pitches to salary negotiation.
• Host a weekly technical interview prep session for members to go over practice questions together. In addition to the interview prep sessions, WiT also hosted the ACM Hour of Code to teach non-CS majors programming skills and the importance of coding. WiT  invited other student organizations such as Women in Math, Diversineers, and the ACM Student Chapter to take part.
• WiT and USF’s ACM Student Chapter hosted a very successful three-day hackathon with the theme of ‘Empowerment’ to encourage women to take part. There were 55 student participants across 15 teams, 43% of participants were female or non-binary. The hackathon had five categories with cash prizes for each winning team which included beginner categories to encourage freshmen and sophomore students. Many of the winners were women and students from underrepresented minorities. The Hackathon included three workshops: Javascript workshop, iOS workshop, and one workshop on VR hosted by someone from a gaming company. We also hosted a panel of alumni from tech companies.