Showing posts with label Sarah Esper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Esper. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Two Jacobs School alumni featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 for 2016

We are incredibly proud of Sarah Guthals and Daniel Lee, two Jacobs School alumni who are featured in this year's 30 Under 30 selection by Forbes Magazine.

ThoughtSTEM cofounder Sarah Guthals
Guthals is a co-founder of ThougthSTEM, a company that focuses on teaching kids how to program, in San Diego and beyond, as well as online. The company has created LearnToMod, a software package that allows students to learn how to code inside of Minecraft. ThoughtSTEM currently offers a free Coursera course to teach educators how to use LearnToMod in their classrooms as a learning tool. The company has also developed CodeSpells, a first-person player video game to teach coding.

Guthals leads ThoughtSTEM's initiatives that connect with schools and teachers, online and in real life. She often chats with educators online to help them customize their programming lessons. She presented a many educational and programming conferences, including Minecon, a Minecraft-centric event that draws crowds every year.

With fellow ThoughtSTEM co-founders and UC San Diego alumni Stephen Forster (computer science) and Lindsey Handley (biochemistry), she co-authored "Minecraft Modding for Kids," in the For Dummies series. Guthals earned her bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. in computer science at UC San Diego.
Daniel Lee with one of the Hush smart earplugs prototypes.

Daniel Lee, nicknamed "Ewok," co-founded Hush Technology, a company that makes smart earplugs with fellow UC San Diego student and alumni Daniel Synn and Daniel Chesong Lee (hence the need for nicknames to distinguish between the three Daniels).

The team raised more than $450,000 for their product on Kickstarter. The three Daniels then turned to making the product a reality. As of December 2015, the company completed a 400 unit preliminary mass production run. Hush plans to deliver its units in January 2016.

Lee, who graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's in mechanical engineering, came up with the idea for the smart earplugs during an entrepreneurship class taught by Teaching Professor Nathan Delson. Lee and the other two Daniels took part in Phases 1 and 2 of the NSF I-Corps program offered at the von Liebig Center here at the Jacobs School.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Jacobs School alum teaches how to program inside of Minecraft at Minecon 2015

Sarah Guthals, a postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, got to teach at Minecon 2015, the all-things-Minecraft convention that took place in London July 4 and 5.

She was at the event with fellow ThoughtSTEM co-founders Stephen Foster, a computer science Ph.D. student, and Lindsey Handley, a biology Ph.D. student.

ThoughtSTEM developed LearntoMod, a software package that teachers how to program inside of Minecraft. At Minecon, Guthals trained teachers to do the same. Event recap in Tweets below.
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Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Computer science Ph.D. student quoted in The New York Times about getting girls interested in programming

We are very excited to see that Jacobs School Ph.D. student Stephen Foster quoted in an opinion piece in The New York Times about getting girls interested in programming.
Forster is a co-founder, with fellow Ph.D. students Sarah Foster and Lindsey Handley, of ThoughtSTEM, a nonprofit organization that teaches children how to code here in San Diego. He talked to the author of the New York Times piece, Nitasha Tiku, the editor of Valleyway, Gawker's blog about the tech industry:

“Students kept walking in asking to learn how to code wearing Minecraft T-shirts,’” said Stephen Foster, a founder of the San Diego-based organization ThoughtSTEM, which teaches kids ages 8 to 18 to code in after-school programs and summer camps. “Once it happened the 20th time, we started to realize, ‘Oh, hey, maybe these kids know something that we don’t.’ ”
So ThoughtSTEM started offering Minecraft 101 classes at UC San Diego Extension. The organization also makes a special effort to enroll girls.  Foster told The New York Times:


A hundred students were on ThoughtSTEM’s waiting list for its first Minecraft class two months ago. “I would say that the girls are actually outperforming the boys, at least in my class,” Mr. Foster said. “And it’s very good to see, because as computer scientists, we definitely recognize that there’s a big gender disparity in our field.” He added, “There are just so many girls who play Minecraft who, as far as I’m concerned, are all people who can be swayed to pursue coding — they just don’t realize it yet.”
"ThoughtSTEM is a proud supporter of getting more girls and women into computing," Esper said. "With a majority of female co-founders, we are so excited to be featured as a company making headway, not just in computer science education, but in engaging a more diverse group with curriculum and programs that attract students of all kinds."
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