Upper School student determined to break gender gaps in computer science

Lauren Yang | Staff Reporter

In the world of computer science, the gender gap between female and male coders persists. Junior Maddy Buxton aims to reduce that gap with the Middle School Computer Science Day which occurred on Jan. 10th. The event attracted girls from 5th to 9th grade who are currently attending Menlo or other local schools. The day featured a guest speaker, Dr. Rhea Tombropoulos, a software engineer at Heartflow, and a demo by the robotics club.

After Tompropoulos’ talk, Buxton led the students into an arduino activity. Students programmed the arduino to flash lights and to play a song. Participants were not able to listen to the songs they programmed because shipping delays caused the speakers to arrive on a later date. Buxton plans to either deliver the incoming materials to participants or to have another event to teach the students more about computer science.

Buxton views this event as a success thanks to the extensive amount of planning and work she put into the day. She found it particularly fulfilling to teach the girls computer science. “It’s cool to see [the students] get excited and to understand that they can do more than what’s just in the lesson,” Buxton said. She hopes that the middle school computer science day will become an annual occurrence.