Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls

Back in 2015 my daughter Klara and her friend Jamie participated in the national online ProjectCSGirls competition creating a VR MRI Simulator and winning 2nd place ✨ Being at the awards gala and seeing the awesome project presentation from middle school girls around the US in many ways inspired me to found Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls.  ProjectCSGirls runs a national competition designed to challenge middle school girls to actively use computer science and technology to develop a solution to an imminent social problem. The challenge is simple. Build something using computer science and technology that can help solve an imminent social problem under one of four themes - global health, a safer world, intelligent technology, and bridging inequalities.  Since 2018 some of 'our' girls have entered and competition and in 2022 we set a new record with six projects and seven girls participating. Suchita , Leah and Kristen & Katie , Nishka , Nicole and Tvisha were all selected...

ORCSGirls is such a positive environment, and their mission is to inspire girls to pursue careers in computer science. I would like to share a few ways that ORCSGirls has inspired and empowered me. I took my first ORCSGirls class as a fifth grader in 2019. The first day I walked in and saw about twenty or more girls all on computers. Before this time I had never met any girls my age that were interested in programming and computer science. I took my seat and listened as Dr. Proffen introduced himself. Then, all the volunteers shared about themselves, and we played a game. I could tell I liked this already. We all opened  CoSpaces , a website for building VR games. My knowledge of how to operate a computer came in handy, and we soon got to work making a treasure hunt game. Even though I already knew a little bit about programming, I will not deny that I needed a lot of help. Thankfully, the volunteers were very helpful, and I soon got the hang of the CoSpaces environment. I left tha...