UNC Charlotte “University in Action” 2013-14
Students & Technology in Academia, Research & Service
STARS (Students & Technology in Academia, Research & Service), is a program co-founded in 2005 by Drs. Teresa Dahlberg and Tiffany Barnes, faculty in UNC Charlotte’s Department of Computer Science. Originally funded by a National Science Foundation grant, the program is designed to increase the participation of women, under-represented minorities, and persons with disabilities in computing disciplines through multi-faceted interventions. The interventions focus on the influx and progression of students from middle school through graduate school in programs that lead to computing careers. STARS is organized as a national constellation of regional stars that include research universities, minority and women's universities and colleges, K-12 educators, industry, professional organizations, and community groups. Approximately 1346 students, 88 faculty from 51 colleges and universities, and over 168 regional partners have participated in student-led community-based research and activities. The program serves 46,000 K-12 students nationally. In 2012, to sustain the program beyond grant funding, theSTARS Computing Corpsbecame a non-profit entity dedicated to building and preparing a larger, more diverse national computing workforce for the 21st Century.
The STARS Computing Corps is comprised of multiple programs including the STARS Leadership Corps, and STARS Haiti. The STARS Leadership Corps is a multi-year service-learning experience that fosters student-led regional engagement, and challenges students to find innovative ways of leveraging technology to solve important social and global problems. The STARS Leadership Corps works with regional K-12 schools and industry and community partners to cultivate an extended student academic community. This student community engages in mentoring, professional development, and research experiences to promote recruitment and leadership development.
Examples of current STARS Computing Corps projects include the SPARCS Saturday Academy team which develops and teaches training modules for pre-college students covering various computer science topics including web development, security, object-oriented programming, and video game design. STARS students serve as mentors for middle school age girls in order to broaden participation in STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). The training sessions are conducted monthly on the UNC Charlotte campus. The High School Game Development at Olympic Outreach Group, another STARS program, uses game development as a means of imparting the value of STEM and higher education STEM learning in an approachable and interesting way. To achieve this goal, STARS interacts with Olympic High School students on a weekly basis help them create their own games and to answer any questions about studying STEM fields in college.
Finally, the STARS Haiti project sent 12 students from five institutions (including UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics) to Haiti during Spring Break. Accompanied by six faculty and community mentors, the STARS students spent two weeks training schoolteachers and students to use kid-friendly laptops for computer-based education. To strengthen human resource capacity, students trained and mentored 24 local Haitian high school students, and assisted local teachers and students in creating their own curricular software for the laptops. These individuals will continue to promote learning with computers long after the STARS students have returned to the United States.STARS partnered with the local non-profit, Mothering Across Continents, to complete this project.
Links:
http://uncc.starscomputingcorps.org/projects
http://www.starsalliance.org/
http://www.starscomputingcorps.org/haiti; http://stars-haiti.posterous.com/
HTTP://FOREIGNPOLICYBLOGS.COM/2012/03/01/HAITI-UNDERGRADUATE-PH-D-STUDENTS-UNC-CHARLOTTE-VOLUNTEERING-COMPUTER-EXPERTISE-HAITI-SPRING-BREAK-2012/
Students & Technology in Academia, Research & Service 7/31/2014