Girls Who Code Kickoff

A word from Brooke Wolford, co-founder of UofM DCMB Girls Who Code:

Hello World,

The inaugural Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics Girls Who Code Club kicked off on Tuesday, September 19th! We have a full class of 15 local high schoolers ready to learn about computational data analysis using Python. They come from ten different high schools and have a wide array of programming experience.

For our first meeting, Executive Committee member Stephanie Thiede presented a lesson on Data Science. We asked GWC participants and Facilitators to let us know what they thought of when they heard the words coding/programming, and here is what they shared....

I’m impressed already! This club started as a dream of mine from my days of research at the National Institutes of Health over two years ago. After teaming up with fellow Bioinformatics graduate student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Zena Lapp, we began to make DCMB GWC a reality in late 2016. We have amazing colleagues and friends who joined the Executive Committee and dedicated their talents and time to make our shared goals come to fruition. We are thankful for an incredibly generous department that supports our outreach efforts through financial contributions, computer lab space, and mentorship. Most importantly, we are excited to spend the next school year coding with our Girls Who Code Club participants! Please check back here for updates on what we are learning together!

-Brooke

What's a Computer?

Our second Girls Who Code club started last week! We are so excited to have 17 students ready to learn about Python programming and data science. We asked our club members to tell us what makes up a computer. We got some great answers including circuits, binary, and motherboard. Facilitator and Executive Committee member Marlena Duda then explained the components of the computer she built this summer using a graphics processing unit (GPU). Now for the language and software part of computers—we start learning Python next week!

October 31st

Beginners and experts alike can agree that coding can be hard. However, the fruitful success followed from hard work is not only satisfying, but also addicting. I learned this through Girls Who Code at the Dept. of Computational Bioinformatics. When I joined the program, I thought I would only be learning python. In reality, I ended up learning so much more.

Google is your best friend. The sooner you learn that the better. Sometimes you won’t always have the answers, nor will the professionals around you. In those sticky situations, google is there for you.

You will also learn about Patience. Its something I still struggle with when it comes to coding. As best described by Napoleon Hill, “Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.” Whether he was a programmer or not, his wisdom speaks out to the programming community. Patience is required to be able code. When writing a program, you will rarely get it right the first time, or the second time, and you’re darn lucky if you get it right the third. However the time you finally get it, the satisfaction is unbelievable.

Through Girls Who Code, I was able to develop these skills to continue my passion in coding. It is a valuable experience that I believe every girl should have. The empowering atmosphere that exists in such an environment is truly special.

—Sarah Brabec