WASHINGTON TWP. — Ten girls, grades 6-8, sit at computers in the Warren Hills High School library with their eyes glued to an elephant dancing in outer space, but they're not simply enjoying a silly video; they're learning detailed computer code to design animation.

Invited to participate in a six-week workshop program for middle school girls run by high school girls, the ten girls are the first group to participate in the GirlsCodingWithGirls educational grant program at Warren Hills, with the first coding session beginning on Wednesday, March 26.

Senior Adesola Sanusi was awarded the grant through the National Center for Women & Information Technology AspireIT Middle School Outreach Program — after designing the workshop lessons herself.

She then brought on six other student teachers, all girls, to assist her in facilitating the workshop, with the hope of continuing the program each year in an effort to inspire young girls to study computer science.

"I'm a firm believer in the fact that there needs to be more women in technology, and that we need to get girls more interested in computer science," Adesola said. "We need to make them believe it's a viable career for them because girls are outnumbered significantly in class."

With only 17 percent female enrollment in computer science classes nationwide, an effort among computer science professionals to close the gender gap in technology and engineering job is being made by inspiring and educating girls to study and pursue opportunities in computing fields.

The NCWIT, Women in Computer Science and Girls Who Code are just a few of the national groups working toward this goal.

Locally, Daryl Detrick, one of the high school's computer science teachers who introduced the class to the district in 2003, boasts that his program has 30 percent female enrollment, but is always working to make it higher.

"In middle school, girls come to the misconception that they're bad at math and science, so they stay away from it, and that's unfortunate. To fix that we have to target it at the middle school level and make an extra effort with girls," Detrick said.

In the high school level, Detrick has introduced girls to female alumni who are studying or working in computer science including a mechanical engineer who designs packaging for L'oreal and in April will be taking 15 students to a Women in Computer Science event at the University of Pennsylvania.

With a new focus on even younger students, Detrick had every Warren Hills middle school student participate in the Hour of Code during National Computer Science week, but sees the GirlsCodingWithGirls workshop as another great tool for inspiring girls.

"We need to raise interest because computer science is not just a male field, it's something anyone can be passionate about. I wanted to do this program to give back locally, and I think in the long run, it may help to put more girls in Mr. Detrick's classes," Sanusi said.

Adesola, 17, of Washington Borough is the recent recipient of a first place award in accounting applications at the state level, qualifying her for nationals. She then received the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award for a student in New Jersey, leading her to apply for the grant teaching program.

The six-week workshop will introduce the girls to the Scratch programming language, robotic programming and career opportunities in scientific fields.

Jumping into computer science after a three week program at CalTech the summer before her junior year, Adesola hopes to share her passion for computing and the girls themselves couldn't be more excited.

"My dad is part of a robotics team and that's how I got into it and it kind of just led from there," said Megan Bodmer, a sixth grader from Oxford Central and youngest member in the group.

Describing aspirations to go into video game design, Warren Hills seventh graders Christina Risk and Deniza Mehmedovic described the program as a "cool way to learn more stuff about coding."

Aiding Adesola in teaching, freshman Jackie Farkas, sophomore Katarina Martucci, juniors Joelle Dowling, Emily Rother and Annie Topoleski and senior Nicole Schott are all interested in pursuing careers in science, technology engineering or mathematics.

Emulating her older brothers and father, all with interests in computer science, Jackie is excited to work with younger girls.

"It's exciting because I didn't have anything like this," she said.

Adesola hopes that Detrick and the other students involved will continue the program once she's gone, calling it her way of "giving back locally."

To manage a full course load of advanced placement classes, she was able to skip the introductory course and is now enrolled in AP Computer Science.

In May she'll make the difficult decision between offers from Harvard University, Yale university and MIT, although she admits she's leaning toward Harvard.

Coming from a very talented family, Adesola has two older sisters, Aderayo, who is studying law at Columbia, and Adetayo who is studying economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Adesola then plans to study computer science and economics, but does not have an exact career in mind.

"Truthfully I just want to learn... there's so much out there," she said.

Computer science education had a slow start Detrick said, but has now grown at the high school to four classes with nine sections and 180 students, and Warren Hills remains one of only two districts in Warren County to offer computer science classes.

Any students, girls in grades 6-8, are still welcome to register online at girlscodingwithgirls.eventbrite.com or by emailing Adesola. The program is each Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and costs $30 per student with dinner included at each workshop.

More Warren County news: NJ.com/Warren • Twitter