Computer Science Tutoring: Leadership Role in an Academic Organization (Silver 3 points) - Class of 2028

 This fall, I was selected to be a Computer and Information Sciences Department Tutor. This excited me because I've always been passionate about computer science education. Throughout high school, I taught computer science for kids on my YouTube channel, Lemonerdy, and created a coding course. Because the language I was teaching was scratch, a block coding language targeted towards kids, I often felt like I wasn't teaching real computer science, even though my tutorials were having real impact exposing hundreds of thousands of kids to foundational computing concepts. Becoming a computer science tutor taught me that, even though I'm teaching "real languages" now like Python and C++, the skills I gained in high school in making technical concepts easy to understand are applicable and important. I had no trouble transitioning to teaching these languages. In fact, I had already been doing so informally before becoming a tutor. During freshman year, I informally tutored my peers, helping them through assignments and conducting study sessions in Python and C++. Doing this with my peers inspired me to want to become a CS tutor this year. I always feel an incredible satisfaction when I help people not only improve their understanding, but also their confidence in their computing skills. As Black women in computer science, we can often feel inadequate or have imposter syndrome over our technical skills. I've experienced this throughout high school and college, so when I can help someone gain this confidence, I'm excited and proud of myself. Though this experience has just begun, I'm ecstatic about the impact I've had so far and the impact I will continue to have. 

Eden Wilson