265: Computer Science Education – Forge Your Own Path with Emily Haggard Greater Than Code

00:54 - Emily’s Superpower: Being a Good Teacher



Greater Than Code Episode 261: Celebrating Computer Science Education with Dave Bock
CyberPatriot


06:24 - Online College Courses vs In-Person Learning / Emily’s Community College Path



Network Engineering
Virginia Tech
Guaranteed Transfer Programs
Loudoun Codes


Emily Haggard: My Path to Virginia Tech



11:58 - Computer Science Curriculums



Technical Depth
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education


19:28 - Being A Good Mentor / Mentor, Student Relationships



Using Intuition
Putting Yourself in Others’ Mindsets
Diversity and Focusing On Commonalities
Addressing Gatekeeping in Tech
Celebrating Accomplishments
Bragging Loudly
Grace Hopper Conference
Cultural Dynamics Spread


38:24 - Dungeons & Dragons



Characters as an Extensions of Players


Reflections:


Dave: College is what you make of it, not where you went.


Arty: Teaching people better who don’t have a lot of experience yet.


Mandy: “Empowered women, empower women.” Empowered men also empower women.


Emily: Your mentor should have different skills from you and you should seek them out for that reason.


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Transcript:


MANDY: Hey, everybody! Welcome to Episode 265 of Greater Than Code. My name is Mandy Moore and I'm here with our guest panelist, Dave Bock.


DAVE: Hi, I'm David Bock and I am here with our usual co-host, Arty Starr.


ARTY: Thank you, Dave. And I'm here today with our guest, Emily Haggard.


Emily is graduating from Virginia Tech with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science this past December so, congratulations. She has a wide variety of experience in technology from web development to kernel programming, and even network engineering and cybersecurity. She is an active member of her community, having founded a cybersecurity club for middle schoolers. In her free time, she enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons and writing novels.


Welcome to the show, Emily.


EMILY: Thank you.


ARTY: So our first question we always ask is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it?


EMILY: So I spent some time thinking about this and I would say that my superpower is that I'm a good teacher and what that means is that the people who come to me with questions wanting to learn something number one, my goal is to help them understand and number two, I think it's very important to make sure that whatever gap we have in our experience doesn't matter and that they don't feel that. So that they could be my 6-year-old brother and I'm trying to teach him algebra, or something and he doesn't feel like he is the 6-year-old trying to learn algebra.


DAVE: I'll echo that sentiment about being a good teacher actually on two fronts, Emily. First of all, I am teaching your brother now in high school and just the other day, he credited you towards giving him a lot of background knowledge about the course and the curriculum before we ever started the class. So he seconds that you're a good teacher.


And then listeners might remember, I was on a few weeks ago talking about my nonprofit and Emily was there at the beginning of me starting to volunteer in high schools. In fact, the way I met Emily, it was the fall of 2014.


The first time I was volunteering at Loudoun Valley High School and one morning prior to class, there was going to be a meeting of a cybersecurity club. There were a bunch to the students milling about and there was this sophomore girl sitting in front of a computer, looking at a PowerPoint presentation of networking IP addresses, how the /24 of an IP address resolves and just all that kind of detail.