Teaching coding and confidence

Three Brandeis juniors are mentoring the next generation of women in computer science

In a small computer lab in Waltham High School, a smiling yellow cat digitally jumps across a projector screen, bouncing between flying brick walls.
 
“Gal, can you die for a second?” asks Eden Shoshan ’16, standing before about 10 high schoolers.
 
“Sure,” says Gal Barak ’16, tapping on a keyboard. The tabby suddenly tumbles off the screen, and the computer game’s bright blue sky is replaced with an ominous green message: “Game Over.” 
 
“Ok,” says Shoshan, “who can tell me how to write this code?”
 
This wintry afternoon, the high school students in Girls Who Code, a new Brandeis club founded by computer science majors Barak, Shoshan and Elena Stoeri-D’Arrigo ’16, are learning how to design and build a video game.
 
The Brandeis club uses the curriculum from the national Girls Who Code organization, whose goal is to train and mentor young women in computer science to address the gender gap in STEM and information technology industries.
 
Between 2000 and 2011, the number of women interested in majoring in computer science dropped by nearly 80 percent in American universities, despite the explosion of home computing and technology sector jobs. Many factors are contributing to this decline; one is the prevailing stereotype of what a “real coder” looks like — a white man.
 
Shoshan, Barak and Stoeri-D'Arrigo started Girls Who Code to break down those barriers and mentor other young women who may be interested in computer science.
 
“It’s really important for anybody — female or male — pursuing computer science to find role models who show the range of who computer scientists can be and what they can do,” Shoshan says.
 
“We want to encourage people to find their own place, carve out their own activities and say, ‘we belong in this industry, too,’” Barak says.
 
That’s not something that Barak, Stoeri-D'Arrigo and Shoshan always felt in their own lives.
 
Though they come from different places — Barak from Israel, Stoeri-D'Arrigo from Manhattan and Shoshan from Connecticut — each felt like an outsider in her early CS classes. 
 
“I remember asking, ‘where do I fit in here?’” says Stoeri-D’Arrigo.
 
But Stoeri-D'Arrigo, Shoshan and Barak all found a mentor in computer science professor Antonella DiLillo. She is the faculty adviser to Girls Who Code and its sister club, Women in Computer Science at Brandeis, also run by Shoshan, Barak and Stoeri-D'Arrigo.
 
“Antonella embodies the importance of mentorship,” says Stoeri-D'Arrigo. “Every semester, she makes an effort to identify the women in her classes, to call on them and to help them prove to themselves that they deserve to be there.”
 
Shoshan says DiLillo kept her in CS when she felt overwhelmed.
 
“I went to Antonella after an especially hard programming assignment, almost crying, and I said, ‘I can’t do it, I’m not smart enough,’” Shoshan recalls. “Antonella told me never to say that again. I was smart enough and I wasn’t alone.”
 
Twice a week, Shoshan, Barak and Stoeri-D'Arrigo make the 15-minute drive to Waltham High School to share that same message with young women.
 
Their semester-long course teaches basic concepts of computer science through project-based learning, such as building video games, AI systems and apps. The course is designed to show the breadth of computer science as well as provide a foundation for logical problem-solving — a valuable skill in many disciplines, Stoeri-D'Arrigo says.
 
The classes are interactive, social and fun. During their discussion of the video game, the women encourage students to speak up and speak out. When the students break off to work on their individual projects, Shoshan, Barak and Stoeri-D'Arrigo circle the room, offering words of wisdom and encouragement.
 
“Don’t be afraid of making mistakes,” Stoeri-D’Arrigo reminds one student.
 
“Trust yourself,” Barak tells another. “You can do this.”