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Department of Computer Science Offers the Hour Of Code in Powell County

August 12, 2019

On July 30, 2019, volunteers from the Department of Computer Science presented the Hour of Code at the Powell County Senior Citizen Center in Stanton, Kentucky.

By Professor Jane Hayes

 

Computers intersect with most every aspect of our daily lives, and they are here to stay.  Not surprisingly, these facts have led to a tremendous demand for people to go into computing. In fact, according to code.org, “computing jobs are the #1 source of new wages in the United States. Kentucky alone has 2,570 openings in computing but only graduated 524 in the field.”

The Hour of Code from code.org is one way to explain the computing field to people. Anyone can try the Hour of Code by going to code.org/learn. The Hour of Code is a 60-minute program that introduces kids of all ages to the joy of writing code. On July 30, 2019, volunteers from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky worked with participants ranging from 12 to 88 years old as they experienced the Hour of Code at the Powell County Senior Citizen Center in Stanton, Kentucky. The Clay City Times wrote an article about the event.  

The program is sponsored by the Industrial Partners Association of the Department of Computer Science (Lexmark, SQS, Delta V Innovations, Fishback Management and Research, Trinsoft, OpenText, Deloitte, and Dean Dorton), and McDonald’s. In addition, Candy Calvert of the Healey family MacDonald’s organization provided free food for the participants and volunteers. The volunteers included: DaiWei, Shaila Zaman, Eva Zhou, Yu Zhou, Jared Payne, Dr. Debby Keen, and Dr. Jane Hayes. We thank the sponsors, volunteers, participants, and Sheila Thomas of Foothills for contributing to the success of this event.  

If you have interest in running the Hour of Code or learning more about computer science or the Industrial Partners Association, please contact Dr. Hayes at hayes@cs.uky.edu .