Students Take Back Computer Science at YU

On the heels of last year's successful Hackathon, the computer science club is ramping up its game for this coming semester. With a new and talented board, the computer science club is preparing some amazing events this year. These events seek not only to strengthen the currently defunct computer science department (the Computer Science Major exists within the Math Department), but to make available resources for all students on both campuses. We hope to empower everyone with the ability to learn coding and computer programming. In today's day and age these skills are becoming more and more essential for nearly every industry from the bio student studying the human genome, to the marketing student wishing to understand big data. Here’s a list of what’s in store.

Computer Science Facebook Group
As its first initiative, the Computer Science Facebook Group was made public giving comp sci students the means to socialize with one another, talk about current classes and discuss class material. The Facebook group will also serve as a resource for non comp sci majors to learn more about technology, computers, and programming in general.

Reaching Non-Coders
In line with this idea, the club will be bringing another new idea to campus. In many colleges and high schools across the country, a campaign called the Hour of Code has spearheaded the effort to bring our generation up to speed with the tech of our time. As it says on its wiki page, “The Hour of Code is designed to introduce people to coding, and get familiarized with coding”. During the Hour of Code, students and professors will be encouraged to join YU on code.org to take a one hour gamified course to learn coding.

Mini hackathon
In conjunction with the team that put together last years incredible and successful Hackathon, the comp sci club will be organizing a mini hackathon around the time of reading weak. This event will be a composite of coding challenges not quite on the same large scale as the 24 hour, all-night, event, but will engage students to compete and write code on the fly. Competing with their fellow hackers to win prizes, gain experience, and and become better programmers

Code slams
Those familiar with programming will have access to code slams, where coders in training gather to practice their skills and get help on projects from their peers. These bi-monthly events will be a great way to collaborate with experienced comp sci students and advance their coding skills. Join comp sci peer tutors and your fellow coding students to work on projects and homework with free swag and refreshments.

Startup++
A big concern for comp sci students in the past has been the inability to gain experience with real world projects. In an attempt to solve this issue and in response to the many clubs and startups on campus that have reached out to us for coding help, we will be working together with Startup YU, and Dean Strauss as well as other related clubs on campus for an event we're calling Startup++. It will be an opportunity to join fellow entrepreneurial minded students in networking with programmers, marketers, graphic designers and comp sci majors, to discuss, plan and form the team of their dreams. This event will yield better club websites, more coding tools for on campus startups and greater experience that comp sci students want and need.

Binny is the President of Yeshiva College’s Computer Science Club