About
Bring IT On! is a three-day workshop hosted by the School of Informatics at Indiana University for undergraduate computer science students from Indiana Universities. Eight schools have each been invited to nominate three students and a faculty advisor to attend the workshop with all expenses paid.
Outreach
The purpose of this workshop is for the invited students to begin development on a K-12 outreach program for their school, using the one that has been created by the Women in Computing (WIC) group at Indiana University as a model. Our program, called Just Be, strives to educate young people about the true nature of computing, helps dispel common stereotypes, introduces exciting fields of computing, and gives K-12 students insights into how they can get involved in computing.
The workshop participants from each school will get a jump start on creating an outreach program that they can take back to their communities and that highlights the computing opportunities at their home institution. The Just Be creators and presenters will be on hand to provide guidance and share their experiences giving presentations to school groups and their advice about how to create, fund, advertise, maintain and sustain a viable outreach program. We will dissect our presentation, slide-by-slide, and explain what we are trying to accomplish at each stage. Time will be allotted for the participants to actually start creating slides for their own presentations, using Just Be as a template. There will be time for each pair to practice their presentation and to deliver it to the group as a whole.
Networking
A secondary goal of the workshop involves connecting Indiana college students with each other and with IUB students and faculty. Participants will have an opportunity to network with computer science students from the other campuses and faculty from IUB's School of Informatics, Department of Computer Science, and School of Library and Information Sciences.
Into the Future
This workshop will give the participants a glimpse of what lies ahead should they decide to continue their study of computing in graduate school. The program includes a structured information session about the challenges of graduate studies and another that highlights various research activities, many of them multi-disciplinary, that are currently underway at Indiana University, giving the students a sense of the numerous directions they might choose to pursue. Tours of the campus and the computing facilities are planned, as well as fun social activities in the evenings.
Bring IT On! in the News
Here's the press release about this workshop. Check last year's site for previous news items.
Contact Us
For general information, please write to us at . The project manager is Christine Task (email). The faculty organizers are Kay Connelly (email) and Suzanne Menzel (email). The webmaster is Joey Morwick (email).
The organizers are divided into three committees, each of which is responsible for the events on one of the three days. The committee chairs are in italics:
Friday: Suzanne Menzel (email), Sarah Loos (email), and Larisse Voufo (email)
Saturday: Adity Mutsuddi Upoma (email), Nina Soo Onesti (email), Joseph Cottam (email), Sriram Mohan (email), and Tammy Toscos (email)
Sunday: Kay Connelly (email), Beenish Chaudry (email), Samantha Foley (email), and Laura Hopkins (email)