• Welcome Back!

    This week, we will be embarking on our Week 2 adventures which will introduce new topics in both tracks. We know that the pace of our program has been different for each student, especially students who are just starting to learn - We understand the information can be overwelming, but we are always open to answering any questions you have on Discord! We make a channel for every coding session and activity for each week, so we hope you leverage this tool and the student community to get your questions answered.

  • The Launch of the Look Book

    Week 1 went great! Our team wants to give a shoutout to all the students who actively participated in Mentoring Sessions, asking great questions on Discord. In fact, in our Weekly Survey, we saw so many cool projects that we wanted to share with you some of them below in our Weekly Look Book! Of course, this is just a subset of all the wonderful projects that our students made. Our staff wants to give EACH student a round of applause👏 for the amazing projects students shared with us in the weekly survey!




  • Forgot to fill out the Week 1 Survey or feeling behind?

    Reach out to @ElizabethLin or @ChristinLin on Discord or email stemleague18@gmail.com. We'll try our best to get you caught up!

  • Field Trip to Hogwarts Next Week!

    Professor Dumbledor has invited all Developers to Hogwarts for the STEM League Coding Tournament! This tournament is OPTIONAL and open to all students in Week 3. The tournament will be happening at Hogwarts where we will be having a week-long full of team building activities and competitions. No knowledge of Harry Potter series required.

    If you plan to participate, you can fill out the Sorting Hat Quiz on the left which will allow us to put you in a Hogwarts House (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin). We will release all House assignments in the beginning of Week 3 so stay tuned. The tournament will include:

      House Competition: Calling all Web Developers! You will be building a web page from scratch with your Housemates and House Prefects will be judging your project at the end of the week.

      The Room of Requirement Escape Room: Bring your problem solving skills to help your House win XPs by completing this activity!

      Quidditch Match: The final tip off - We will be hosting a LIVE coding competition on Friday! Details will be released next week.

Week 2 Schedule


Mentor Spotlight


  • Jessica will be leading our Make Your Own Portoflio workshop this week.

    When/how did you get into tech?
    I got into tech my first semester of college because I had to take an Intro to CS class as a Cognitive Science major. I actually never envisioned myself in tech; I took four years of medical classes in high school!

  • Favorite quarantine hobby?
    Virtual coffee chats with people! It's been really fun getting to chat with so many interesting individuals. Even though I can't interact with people in-person, I've had tons of meaningful virtual conversations!

    Advice for students/developer about learning CS:
    Don't compare your skill set with others. I actually didn't want to take Intro to CS because I felt like I was years behind my fellow peers who had been coding since they were kids. It's easy to fall victim to impostor syndrome, especially in the tech world, but at the end of the day, if

  • you focus on yourself, you'll be alright in the long run.

    Whats your favorite part about studying tech/engineering?
    CS is an extremely diverse field with very niche areas that most people don't know about - there is definitely something for everyone. I love that I can create something with what I've learned. Often times, it's hard to see where you'll use your school knowledge in the real world, but with CS, you can learn a new programming language and make a project with it, which I think is pretty awesome!
  • Favorite song/artist/movie recommendations?
    My favorite artist is Jhené Aiko, and because I'm a movie/tv fanatic, I don't have just one favorite movie or show. Some of my favorite movies are 21, Megamind, and Pitch Perfect. My favorite shows are New Girl, The Good Place, and Atypical. I'm currently watching Avatar and Community, which are also bound to end up on my favorites list!

  • Vision to Implementation

    You guys may be wondering, I'm learning HTML/CSS - but where does this fit in the real world?

    One of our mentors Wen, is a teaching assistant for an Intermediate Data Programming course at UW Seattle. During her past spring break, she worked with the course instructor to redesign the course website. She started off making a wireframe of the new website layout and polished the design using a design software named Sketch.

    Then, she used her web development knowledge to restyle the original site according to the design and added features to make the website more user-friendly. For example, she implemented a sticky side panel with Javascript that allows users to quickly jump to different sections of the page.

    To make the website more accessible for all users, she also thoughtfully adjusted the theme color of the website and chose a shade of green that has a high enough contrast ratio for people whose eyes have lower contrast sensitivity, as well as modified some custom UI elements and made them interactable using a keyboard.



  • The website template she made is not only used by the course she is TAing for - some instructors of other CS courses also adapted her template to their own use.

    According to Wen, there is really no magic trick to how she created this website template - she had a vision of what the website should look like, then used the exact same skills that you all are learning right now and in the upcoming weeks (HTML, CSS, Javascript) to realize that vision.

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