By Steve Edelman

A new three year program in computer science is starting up in collaboration PSU. Advanced computer science students from high schools around the region will be invited to spend three to four weeks over consecutive summers as part of a workshop where teams will each design, code, debug and ship a program.

Entering students will have completed Advanced Placement computer science, most as freshmen or sophomores. However just being bright is not enough. To gain a spot students will have had to demonstrate to their comp science teachers (who select them) that they are also highly motivated and hard working. So that any student with these attributes is able to attend the program it is given without charge.

First year teams choose their project. Second year teams take on real projects from outside. Third year students are expect to be ready to take on an internship.

There is no lack of highly qualified applicants. Even though this first year we have restricted the program geographically and limited the computer science teachers to recommending no more than one or two students per school with three weeks left until the deadline to apply we have received more than three times the nominations than we have available spots.

We know how to find the students. What we need are the projects these student’s will work on when they return in the summer of 2017.

In order to line those up we are reaching out to companies that might consider supplying a project now so they will have an opportunity to visit the Workshop this summer, see how it operates, meet the students who would they would be working for them next year and decide if participating would be a worthwhile thing for them to do.

If your organization would like to give us a project to do, perhaps something that you’ve always wanted but that there never seems to be the time to get to let’s see if can help and in so doing teach these kids a ton of stuff they aren’t going to learn in any classroom high school or college.

If interested contact Steve Edelman at 503-297-6908 or www.nwapw.org.