An outlet for girls in a predominantly male field, is the Girls Who Code club. Should someone join them? Are they interested in the club’s purpose? The club meets twice a month, on the first and last Wednesday, respectively, from 7:30 AM to when school starts—meeting in C201, club advisor and math teacher Jennifer Crutcher’s room.
While the club meets, they perform several different activities. From robotics to creating games and websites. During club time, the club president and senior at OCHS, Elbathel Abebe, says they “explore different programming languages and create our own games and personal websites.”
The club is majorly student-led, which allows for lots of learning opportunities in the student body leading the club. While some clubs may have the club advisor as the main leading figure for the club, Girls Who Code takes a different approach. Instead, they allow the students to do the majority of the work. Club advisor Jennifer Crutcher says she “kind of does all the administrative tasks.”
Why one might be interested in joining will depend on the person. Whether someone would be interested in joining because they wish to learn more about Computer Science, whether they already have some experience, or if they’re just looking for a new community. Club president Elbathel Abebe says they had “friends who were seniors at the time created the club and introduced me to it” who later graduated, leaving the club to her.
The club performs many distinctive activities, one of which is a yearly field trip they go on. Every year, they go to visit a software company located in Lake Oswego, Oregon, named Trimble. Last year, Club President Elbathel Abebe said they were given a tour of their facilities and “learned about their individual career paths.”
Why might the people who are currently in it, lead it, even do it? What brought them to the club? What brought them to start attending the club? The club advisor, Jennifer Crutcher, has a strong opinion on this and says that growing up as a female in STEM, there were very few doing the same as her. In college, she was majoring in math and noticed that “Computer Science was like, all guys.”
Even if one doesn’t have any experience in the field, this club may still be for them. Students don’t need any coding knowledge to be interested in joining their activities. If someone were to be interested at all in the field, they would just join the club. Club leader Elbathel Abebe “would recommend the club to pretty much everyone.”
Computer science and the field don’t have to stay a male-dominated field. The Girls Who Code club proves that it doesn’t have to be a male-dominated field; it can contain both females and males intermingled. Club advisor Jennifer Crutcher says that “women can do it just as well as men can.”
