Fontbonne Corridor Wins AP Laptop Science Award From College Board

BAY RIDGE — Fontbonne Corridor, The Lab University for Ladies, has acquired the University Board’s 2020 AP Computer system Science Feminine Diversity Award for increasing younger women’s obtain to Innovative Placement (AP) Pc Science Concepts (CSP). Fontbonne was one particular of 831 educational facilities to be nationally acknowledged for this achievement.

This honor also acknowledges the operate Fontbonne is accomplishing to engage far more college students in computer system science and to close the gender gap. In accordance to the National Girls Collaborative Job, women only generate 18% of computer science bachelor’s levels and account for 28% of the science and engineering workforce.

Fontbonne Director of Technologies Mark Surdyka has been overseeing the laptop science development currently being manufactured within the significant school. After launching the school’s Women Who Code club in 2014, Surdyka said he teamed up with the Edhesive application and the Amazon Potential Engineer method previous calendar year to include an authorized AP CSP program into Fontbonne’s curriculum.

Ten upperclassmen took the inaugural class, studying anything from the fundamentals of personal computers to doing the job on algorithms to checking out Amazon’s automated approaches in the place of work. They also participated in various tasks during the university 12 months, which incorporated coding their have method to develop a password generator.

Surdyka mentioned the taking part learners have honed their computational imagining and programming competencies while studying and proactively undertaking a thing new virtually each and every working day. Pupils in the AP class are currently finding out a lot more about electronic manipulation and will be producing at minimum three image filters for their approaching mid-wintertime crack assignment.

“There will be a couple additional initiatives and then, towards the conclusion of the calendar year, they’ll essentially generate and post a computer system software that consists of everything they’ve explored all over the system,” Surdyka reported. “It’s not just all about the AP exam itself [which is typically administered every May].”

Due to the fact getting the award, Surdyka is thrilled to go on teaching the training course following calendar year. “We’re making an attempt to educate our women in this new place, give them the expertise, and display them that there are various avenues out there,” he mentioned, listing cybersecurity as a key instance.

In the slide of 2020, Fontbonne launched a new web page, symbol, and tagline to debut its difference as a lab school.

“As The Lab University for Women, we are in the forefront of innovations in training and discovering across all disciplines. We are not just for potential experts, health professionals, or engineers. We are for all learners who are expansive thinkers, imaginative difficulty solvers, and potential pioneers,” the web page reads. “Unique in training, we constantly evolve our curricula and our approaches to continue to keep tempo with the unparalleled charge of adjust in the environment in which ladies will require to thrive and be successful.”

With that in intellect, Surdyka stated, “We’re continuing to make Fontbonne a area the place all people can be successful and arrive out with the knowledge and techniques that are needed for today’s work marketplace.”