Pacific University professors win $554,000 grant to develop computer science camp for middle-school girls | OregonLive.com

Pacific University professors win $554,000 grant to develop computer science camp for middle-school girls | OregonLive.com

Pacific University professors win $554,000 grant to develop computer science camp for middle-school girls

By Wendy Owen, The Oregonian

April 07, 2010, 4:30PM

Three Pacific University professors have won a $554,000 grant from theNational Science Foundation to develop and run a three-year computer science summer camp for middle school girls.

The four-week camp, which starts in the summer of 2011, will emphasize mentoring as well as teaching adolescent girls computational thinking. The program will track the girls for 10 years to study the long-term effects of the camp on their lives.

The 30 girls -- a different group of 30 will be chosen each year for three years, totaling 90 -- will be taught by women and take field trips to visit women computer scientists at companies such as Vernier Software and Technology, Intel and Flying Rhino. They will also stay overnight at condominiums on the beach.

The camp, Girls Gather for Computer Science (G2CS), is free. The grant will pay for transportation costs, meals, computer equipment and software, as well as stipends for the eight instructors, who will come from universities or industry and middle schools.

The curriculum is still being developed, but lessons could include game programming, data gathering and analysis and biotechnology, said