ComputeTY Wins President's Award For Engagement

The School of Computing were celebrating another award at the Helix recently when they received the President’s Award for Engagement.  The ComputeTY team, Dr. Jennifer Foster, Gary Conway and Christine Stears were delighted to have been chosen as the overall winners out of a pool of 40 nominees.

The award recognises outstanding contributions by staff and student to the engagement mission of DCU.  Engagement is defined widely to embrace civic engagement, public engagement, enterprise engagement, sustainability engagement and student engagement.

ComputeTY is a technology course run for over 10 years by DCU’s School of Computing, in which transition year students from second-level schools are provided with the opportunity to develop an interest in computer science and consider it as a third-level subject choice.   In the beginning, ComputeTY students learned web design, but the programme has evolved considerably over the years, with new streams, Java Programming and Mobile App Development, emerging along the way, as well as a DCU campus tour. The programme has always encouraged female students to consider a career in computing, and in recent years, has introduced many girls to the world of coding. 

To date, ComputeTY has taken in over 4000 secondary school students from over 70 schools, reaching out to schools both in the local community and beyond Dublin to Louth and Meath.  It has been supported over the years by the HEA and ADAPT http://adaptcentre.ie/.

Pictured above the ComputeTY team Gary Conway, Jennifer Foster, Christine Stears.