Southwest Baptist University News
Release
Contact:
Charlotte Marsch, Director of Marketing and Communications
(417)
328-1803 / cmarsch@sbuniv.edu
Google selects SBU again to host
summer workshop for teachers
BOLIVAR, Mo. — Google has selected Southwest
Baptist University’s Department of Computer and Information Sciences to receive
a grant for a second year to underwrite a summer 2013 workshop for elementary
and secondary school teachers. The grant was approved under Google’s CS4HS
(Computer Science for High School) program.
Competition
for the grants was “highly competitive,” according to Erin Mindell, manager for
the grant program in Google’s New York headquarters. The focus of the two-day
workshop, scheduled for July 12-13 at SBU, is to help the teachers begin to
incorporate “computational thinking” into classroom activities in all academic
disciplines. Teachers of any academic area in middle or high school are invited
to the workshop.
CS4HS is an
initiative sponsored by Google to promote computer science and computational thinking
in high school and middle school curriculum. Workshops developed under the
grant incorporate informational talks by industry leaders and discussions on
new and emerging CS curricula at the high school and middle school level. About
140 universities worldwide were awarded grants by Google and held workshops in
2012.
“If we
reach the teachers, then we have this wider-reaching effect,” said Helene
Martin, a high school computer science and CS4HS teacher for Carnegie Mellon
University. “As teachers, we ultimately have a lot of impact on what our
students do. If we can teach a class that’s engaging and brings in elements
that students are intrigued about, they're likely to study it in college. If we
can get this group of people excited about computer science themselves, we
figure that they can go on and do a little more research, bring in guest
speakers, integrate it into their own curriculum and that's how we get the next
generation of computer scientists.”
SBU’s
workshop is in the Gene Taylor Free Enterprise Center on the Bolivar campus.
The event is free, and teachers will be provided a stipend to attend. Teachers
may receive one hour of graduate credit for completion of the instructional
workshop. Registration details for the workshop will appear on SBU’s website at
www.sbuniv.edu in the near future.
With more than 20 top-10 national awards in the last four
years, SBU’s CIS Department has established itself as a national leader among
CIS departments at evangelical Christian universities in the United States. For more information about the SBU
CIS Department, call Dr. Tim DeClue, chair of the CIS Department and professor
of computer and information sciences, at (417) 328-1704.
Photo cutline: SBU CIS faculty on a recent visit to Google’s
Boulder, Colo., offices are, from left, Dr. James Cain, Dr. Tim DeClue and Dr.
Baochuan Lu.
###
Southwest
Baptist University is a leader among private universities in truly integrating
Christ-centered academic pursuits with comprehensive professional programs at
an affordable price. At SBU, the faculty and staff create a caring, academic
community to prepare students to be servant leaders in a global society. For
more information, visit www.SBUniv.edu.
