Brad Zdenek of Nittany AI Alliance speaks to a DevPSU Learning group
DevPSU Summit to take place April 2 at University Park
03/15/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – DevPSU, a student-run program created by the Penn State student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, will host the first DevPSU Summit on April 2 from 7-9 p.m. in the Business Building Atrium to showcase the work of students from the DevPSU Startup Program.
DevPSU has two programs aimed at giving students real-world experience for solving business and research problems with computer science skills. The first program, DevPSU Learning, is an eight-week program intended to teach core competencies of collaborative software development in a peer-driven environment. After the completion of DevPSU Learning, students may continue on to DevPSU Startup, a twelve-week program where students work in small, collaborative teams on a computer science problem for themselves, a company or a researcher. The program culminates in DevPSU Summit, where the DevPSU Startup students will showcase their work to the broader community.
DevPSU was founded about a year ago with DevPSU Learning being established in the fall of 2018 and DevPSU Startup following in the spring of 2019.
“It started with a conversation at the Waffle Shop,” said Chris Pratt, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in computer science and engineering and the director of DevPSU. “Some of the other Association for Computing Machinery students and I got together and basically thought of how we could cater to students in a way that supplements what we’re doing in class and would offer real-world experience.”
So far, the nascent programs have had a successful first year, with DevPSU Startup supporting five student teams, including one that is working with Rebecca Passonneau, professor of computer science and engineering, on natural language processing, and one that is working with Sam Richards, teaching professor of sociology and the instructor of courses with high enrollment such as Sociology 119, to find a better method for taking attendance for a large group in a way that is time efficient and does not allow for cheating.
Pratt and the other members of DevPSU are looking forward not only to the Summit, which will include an address from Eric Barron, president of Penn State, a poster session and a workshop on how to design an app without coding, but also to future iterations of DevPSU.
“One of our goals is to get more students who don’t have coding experience involved with the programs and to grow the programs we have,” said Pratt.
While the Summit is open to the general public, registration is requested. Please visit https://goo.gl/TR64Cuto learn more and register.
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Students in DevPSU Learning participate in a session on Github, a coding collaboration tool.
