As computer scientists, the way that we impact society seems pretty clearly laid out. We write code, and the result is new ways for people to communicate, learn, organize data, or even drive cars. Last week, however, Doug Wolfe, who is the head of operations for Facebook’s Atlas advertising platform here in Austin, came to speak to Dr. Nandakumar’s Elements of Computing in Society class with a different message. He explained that innovation is about more than just computer scientists’ skill set. It includes an entire mindset as well.

I just finished an article for the department's news page about a really cool CS workshop at an elementary school hosted by a Lecturer Alison Norman and some UTCS undergrad students. I hope you'll check it out and be inspired to find ways to bring CS to the next generation of students.

Hi mom and the 71 other people who I recently found out read my blog (we just started tracking our audience numbers, so exciting!).

I've been learning about UT's efforts to bring high school girls into our department these past few weeks. Read my news article about a summer camp we offer called First Bytes! You can even apply to work at the camp.

Without question, lots of kids have recently made UT Austin their dream school. While they may not have understood Empowering Leadership Alliance’s (ELA) Towers of Hanoi problem, or walked away with the ability to program UT’s soccer-playing robots, they certainly got the message that computer science, and school itself, is fun.

Listen to any conversation in PCL during finals week and you’ll be reminded that college is really, really difficult. Not only are we told that our GPAs will define the rest of our lives, we’re also expected to be involved outside of our classes, have some sort of social life, stay in contact with people from home and somehow manage to get more than twenty minutes of sleep a night (and of course any free time you all have should be spent reading this fantastic blog).

I remember staying awake until 4 AM in high school talking to my best friend about an essay that we were both freaked out to write the next day in class. It was a weeknight, and for some reason, we had convinced our parents that a sleepover would be a good idea before our slow death on lined paper the next day. When she fell a chapter behind in math, I could always show her a few concepts she’d missed in class, and in a few hours we’d be on the same level again.