“This was the best day ever in my life.” Teacher Jorge Reyes wrote us about this enthusiastic comment, which he overheard from one of the students in his sixth grade technology class at Florence Nightingale Middle School in Cypress Park. The class of 30 students had spent the morning on the USC campus to work on an Hour of Code … Read More

Dance party is the theme for Code.org’s Hour of Code activities during this year’s National Computer Science Education Week (12/3 – 9, 2019). Coders are able to select from 32 hit songs by society’s most popular artists — Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Outkast, to name just a few. The coding challenge is to use the programming application … Read More

Monday, 12/3 – 12/4 USC VAST’s annual Code Dojo event will bring together 30 6th grade students of Mr. Jorge Reyes of Florence Nightingale Middle School in Cypress Park plus volunteer engineers from Google and USC student volunteers. Together, they will work on Google’s CS First Hour of Code activity. 9:30 am — Bus arrives at USC with 30 6th grade students, greeted by USC students and … Read More

On Friday, November 16, 2018, Professor Keyue Shen welcomed science teacher Ms. Huang Oh and her students of the STEM Academy of Boyle Heights to his Integrative Biosystems Engineering Lab at USC Viterbi. This visit is part of a partnership between Professor Shen and the STEM Academy of Boyle Heights that aims to increase awareness and enthusiasm for STEM pathways for the traditionally underserved community of Boyle Heights.  [Read more]

“Forward is 0 degrees, right turn is 90 degrees!” shouts a tiny first grade student as she helps her partner code a robot through a maze. Elementary school students generally don’t learn angles until about fourth grade, but when students get the chance to code a robot, they will learn just about anything. At least, that’s a common outcome for BOTS, which aims to motivate students to excel at computational thinking.  [Read more]

Professor Joon-Ho ChoiOn Thursday, November 8, 2018, USC Professor Joon-Ho Choi traveled to the STEM Academy of Hollywood to share his innovative research with tomorrow’s engineers and architects. A professor of Building Science at the USC School of Architecture, Choi is shaping the future of built environments through his research on how the quality of indoor environments affects occupants’ health and quality of life.  In his presentation entitled, “Human-Building … Read More

October 21 – 27, 2018, is National Chemistry Week, an annual American Chemical Society (ACS) event to build awareness of chemistry concepts at the local level—something we at USC Viterbi Adopt-a-School, Adopt-a-Teacher (VAST) can really get behind! [Read more]

The SHINE students challenged themselves last Friday in sessions devoted to the field of electrical engineering, including a tour of USC’s cleanroom and a workshop on quantum computing. In the morning, the cohort split up and took turns touring the USC Keck Photonics Cleanroom. [Read more]

The SHINE cohort meeting on Friday 13, 2018, SHINE began with a brief overview of USC Viterbi poster conventions in preparation for the SHINE Poster Session on 8/2/2018 from 1:30 – 3:30. But we quickly ceded the floor to the SHINE  [Read more]

Each Friday, we at SHINE highlight on a particular branch of engineering in workshops designed to show SHINE students the diversity of the field. And speaking of lights, the SHINE students on Friday, July 13, 2018 not only received an introduction to the foundations of Civil Engineering [Read more]