Dec. 7 — Joseph Molina, a first-generation Latino college student from the agricultural community of Salinas, California, knew very little about advanced computing before last summer.
Now, after participating in the Integrative Computational Education and Research Traineeship (ICERT) program at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT), he’s homed in on the field he would like to work in: developing mobile applications and bringing new ideas to life.
“The experience I had in the program is one that I will take with me for the rest of my life,” he says. “I not only expanded my knowledge in computer science but improved the overall confidence I have in my programming skills as a software engineer. It was a vital experience that will push me forward in life.”
Like much of the tech world, high performance computing does not fully reflect the diversity of the U.S. Consequently, the nation is in danger of missing out on vital talent from those not exposed to advanced computing as a possible career.
These facts led TACC — one of the world’s leading computing research centers — to redouble their efforts to broaden the diversity of students who learn about supercomputing.
Through a series of education and outreach programs hosted over the summer and continuing throughout the year, TACC is providing transformative learning experiences to dozens of students with limited computing experience. In doing so, they are creating a model of how to recruit, train and engage Latina, African American and women students in advanced computing.
The entire article can be found here.
Source: Aaron Dubrow, TACC