Two students from GCAA were the regional winner/runner ups of the NCWIT Women In Engineering award. NCWIT is an organization that encourages women to get into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and every year it awards certain females for their accomplishments in coding (computer programming) based on what they’ve done and what they look forward to doing in the future.

The regional winner was 11th grader, Danielle Crivello, with fellow 11th grader, Vernesha Jackson, as the runner up. Neither of them would have been considered if it weren’t for biology teacher, Mr. Warren’s, extended day Innovative Engineering class. “Mr. Warren introduced me to the field of engineering, actually, because before it was just like engineering, oh, cars and whatnot, but he showed me that there was a wider range of engineering than what I thought.” Jackson said.

They were introduced to computer engineering through a project in the Innovative Engineering class. The students were asked to create a game using the Python coding language. “When he gave us the project to go create a game, [he said] ‘Here’s a website, here’s a computer, go learn it on your own, ‘cause I don’t know anything about it.’” Jackson said.

The awards were presented on Sunday, March 8th. Crivello received two copies of the award; one for her, and one for display here at GCAA. Given alongside the award were gifts from many prominent companies, including Monsanto, who contributed a Kindle Fire HD6, and Google, who contributed a pen that wrote with their trademark colors. Two of the prizes were scholarships, $1000 a year, to UMSL and the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

If you are looking at getting into coding and computer engineering, “You gotta dive in and just really try it, and if you don’t like it at first it’s probably just the language.” Crivello said, “I know some people can’t, like, fathom all of this at once, but if your brain doesn’t hurt after a few minutes, then just keep trying.”