summer scholars – Seidenberg School News

NSF Billion Oyster Project video features Pace!

The National Science Foundation (NSF) released a cool new video featuring the Billion Oyster Project (BOP) and Pace University! The Billion Oyster Project is a community of students, teachers, scientists, volunteers, businesses, and schools. Its goal? Getting down and dirty to conduct research and restore the New York Harbor back to its oyster-inhabited glory. With a $5 million grant from the NSF, the project leaders hope to inspire students, specifically middle school students, to help drive the restoration.

At Pace University, the Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS) and BOP Fellowship trains teachers and educators how to engage students in environmental science and restoration ecology. In 2016, our annual STEM Collaboratory camp teamed up with BOP for an exciting two weeks of research, problem solving, and design thinking. We taught campers HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Google Charts to create a helpful solution.

The NSF video features our very own professor Lauren Birney, the director of Pace University’s STEM Collaboratory. “We’re creating this smart and connected community here in New York City, but then allowing that to grow into other communities,” Birney said. She hopes to build the Billion Oyster Project by continuing to target local middle schools in low-income neighborhoods where students are underrepresented in STEM fields.

Participants aren’t just making new friends, they’re also engaging in STEM activities while restoring the ecosystem in their own backyard! Hands on work teaches students how to measure oysters, test water samples, and other cool activities that keep them active and constantly contributing. The Billion Oyster Project’s website keeps track of teachers, students and volunteers’ work with an interactive map.

Learn more about the 2016 STEM Collaboratory NYC experience, or go further back and check out our Summer Scholars program’s awesome experience with the Billion Oyster Project in 2015!

10th Annual Summer Scholars Experience

Every summer for the past 10 years, Seidenberg has hand-selected some of the highest-achieving high school students across the nation to be a part of the Seidenberg Summer Scholars Experience (SSSE). SSSE brings these scholars together on our campus in New York City for a week of mobile hacking that will prepare the scholars for a bright future in computer programming. The camp includes an intensive hackathon that challenges their skills in team work, ideation, programming, execution, and – dauntingly for some – presenting and displaying each step of their process to their peers and mentors. For students preparing for their final year of high school, it’s a big and exciting undertaking for the summer.

What is even more enriching in the Scholar Experience is that each summer we challenge the scholars to create an application that has the potential to help a cause. In some years this has been a call for apps that augment STEM education; in other years we focused on Cyber Security and User Experience. This year, we asked the scholars to create an app around the Billion Oyster Project, a project which Seidenberg has become proudly affiliated with over the past year through a generous grant awarded to the school by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Of course, along with the challenge of hacking for multiple hours a day, the Scholars Experience is always balanced with a collection of the best adventures in New York City. The scholars get a curated tour of the tech scene, including tours of Google and Microsoft’s headquarters. They also enjoy intimate visits to startups like AppFigures, which have been pioneered by Summer Scholars of the past, as well as Seidenberg alumni. Then, just to be absolutely certain that this experience is unforgettable, the Scholars are also treated to performances like Fuerza Bruta and some of the delicious cuisine that this city has to offer.

Not only are mentors and professors shocked every year by what these scholars can accomplish in just a week, but the scholars themselves surprised even themselves with their skills! One of our scholars from Staten Island, Nicole Budzinski (top right), expressed that her own abilities surprised her, as she hadn’t taken on a project quite like this before. On the experience overall, Amanda Zeitlin and Nicole Feygin (top left and bottom right) both laughingly agreed that they were surprised to have found such good friends at “nerd camp.” With a week’s worth of days filled with fun, vigor, and excitement, the scholars are able to form long-lasting friendships with their team mates from across the States. On top of that, participants will always have a direct connection to the heart of NYC through their mentors and professors at Seidenberg.

For more information on this year’s scholars, take a look at our video introducing each scholar! Plus, this year we’ve made daily videos that can be found on our YouTube channel.

(Pictured from top: Amanda Zeitlin from NY, Nicole Budzinski from NY, Brandan Ingram from OK, Beck Fuga from PA, Nicole Feygin from MI, and Joe Redling-Pace from NJ. Photography credit belongs to Noura Boustany Jost).

More photos of the experience can be found on the Seidenberg Facebook page.

A Chat with Seidenberg CS ’13 Alum, Keith McPherson

In keeping in touch with Seidenberg alumni, we’re able to keep track of the success they reap from their Seidenberg education. Now we’d like to share this information with you, to better prepare you for life before, during, and after your Seidenberg Experience. Today we’re sharing with you what we’ve learned from Computer Science alum of ’13, Keith McPherson.

Keith explained to us that he never decided to study computer sciences but, instead, was called to the degree through his own passions and interests in computing. The same happened in his choice to come to Pace University. He was accepted into 08‘s Seidenberg Summer Scholars Experience and then knew he would study at no place other than Pace after his participation in the program.

Looking back on his experience at Pace, McPherson said, “I don’t believe I could’ve gone to school anywhere else and had a comparable experience. Seidenberg isn’t a school; it’s a family. The people I met and opportunities I had were all amazing and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.”

McPherson now works at a large EMR (Electronic Medical Record) software company that he describes as a “market leader in providing an integrated system to large hospitals.” When we asked if he was able to integrate his knowledge from Seidenberg into his job, he replied, “The fundamentals of CS are something I use everyday, but the languages, frameworks and projects I work on were never even discussed. This is mostly because I work in a very specialized industry with very specialized technology. I had 6 months of training before I was allowed to start actually working on their software.”

Some of the software McPherson works on and owns is used by more than half the doctors in the country. While McPherson is excited that he is helping the medical world, the only downside is that he is occasionally required to write in archaic languages like MUMPS.

Remembering his time at Seidenberg, McPherson gives a nod to Prof. Benjamin, whose classes he enjoyed, and Dr. Kline, with whom he volunteered for FIRST and worked on many research projects. He also recommends the class on Compilers, which he explains verbatim, “turned me into a man.”

McPherson left his own advice for today’s students of Seidenberg: “You’ve been told this a million times, but get good grades and work on side projects. Every offer I had upon graduating required a good GPA and the awesome projects I had done made me stand out against other applicants. When you’re out of school and in the real world you’ll never say, ‘man I wish I would’ve sat in my dorm playing League of Legends more…’ you’ll say, ‘I wish I would’ve gone to class more.'”

#SSSE2013: If You’re Wondering When It Will Be the Right Time to Start Programming…

…that time is now. The youngsters are catching up to the Zuckerbergs and Gates’ of their elder generations and they will leave stragglers in their dust. This week, Seidenberg hosted a camp for high-acheiving students who are interested in programming. The goal of the program was to assist these high schoolers in creating their own computing projects from scratch and giving them a chance to work as a team to present their completed project, in this case a mobile app, to a panel of experts and professors in hopes to prepare them for a time when they will professionally create apps on their own. The genre of this year’s mobile apps was our favorite subject, STEM. Each group (4-5 students and 2 mentors) was required to program an app that would aid other individuals of whatever age group they chose to learn about STEM related topics. These included games, questionnaires, flash-card based apps, and new ways to allow people to actively participate in learning about STEM.

The Summer Scholars were kept busy in hackathon sessions, led by our friends Andrew Clutterbuck and Peter Tapio from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, and a few of our top professors, including Dr. Richard Kline and Dr. Christelle Scharff. Dr. Kline is, as we know, heavily invested in robotics yet also an expert in teaching usability. On top of this, Dr. Scharff added her knowledge of mobile programming to the lectures provided for the scholars. However, the scholars were also given the chance to explore the ins and outs of NYC. They came from all over the USA and many had not seen the city before in their lives. The scholars visited the usual spots: the American Museum of Natural History, Times Square, Seaport, Central Park, and China Town. Along with the tourist hits, students also got exclusive visits to startup companies and larger corporations; these included Codecademy, StreetEasy, AppFigures, Microsoft, and the crowd favorite: Google. The students were able to ask questions about programming and the computing field as it’s been growing and what it will become when this new generation of programmers hits the ground running. Each company was welcoming and informational; the students left each place with a burst of inspiration that they were able to incorporate into their projects.

The final presentations were exceptional; the students proved that they had an excellent foundation for an app as well as a foundation in computing for any other apps they may come up with in their future. Leaving the camp after only a week was a bitter end, but well worth it. Students reached out to each other on their own social media, intending to keep in touch long after the camp has passed. Other comments from the students after the session ended included, “Who’s gonna have Post Trip Depression?” from Californian scholar, Ruiqi Mao, and a from a few others, confirmation that Pace is their choice school (whoop whoop!) after going through this program.

New Class of Seidenberg Scholars Pleased with College Life

As the Seidenberg Scholars Program enters its 5^th year, the school welcomes five outstanding 1^st year students into its ranks. They include Brooke Ribelin from Linwood, NC; Michael Cornell from Fishkill, NY; Julie Gauthier from Amston, CT; Cayman Mitchell from Rowlett, TX; and Wayne Williams from Brooklyn, NY.

Brooke, Michael and Julie all became familiar with the Seidenberg School’s programs and its supportive community as well as life in the “Big Apple” while participating in the 2010 Seidenberg Scholar Summer Experience prior to entering their senior year of high school. Judging from their comments, they see more than satisfied with their choice of college. Continue reading “New Class of Seidenberg Scholars Pleased with College Life”

Seidenberg Bids Farewell to its First Class of Scholars

This May, the Seidenberg School graduated its first class of Seidenberg Scholars, actively recruited high school graduates who attended Pace both as Pforzheimer Honors College students and as invited participants in the prestigious Seidenberg Scholars program. The program is funded by the gift from Ivan G. Seidenberg, Pace alumnus and member of the University’s Board of Trustees. Continue reading “Seidenberg Bids Farewell to its First Class of Scholars”