What Can a Student From South Bend Do With Code?
This week the Grotto Network released a story on our student, Camisa. It’s pretty awesome and you should check it out.
Camisa took our program back in the fall of 2015. She started out in our intro to web development course and has been in our alumni program, Code Legion, since it began. She has coded a ton of projects, worked two paid internships with tech companies (one of them is our company), won awards for her work, and is currently deciding on where she will attend college in the fall of 2018.
The thing I find most impressive about Camisa is not all of her accomplishments, but rather her willingness to attack new experiences. She took our program completely on a whim. When she signed up she wasn’t sure what she was getting herself into, but she approached our program with a positive attitude, focus, and a ton of genuine effort.
She was only 15 when she started with us and was very passionate about getting an internship. She completed the program in November of 2015 and asked if we knew of any internships she could apply for. We told her that we only knew of companies at the time that would take students ages 16 and up.
In June of 2016 my cofounder, Alex Liggins opened her email one day to find a note from Camisa that said something along the lines of, “Hi Miss Alex, I wanted to let you know that today is my 16th birthday and I would like to apply for an internship now.” Shortly after that, Camisa began her internship working with Luma, a technology company that builds learning management tools.
If that doesn’t impress you maybe some of Camisa’s additional accomplishments will…
- Worked on a team of SBCS students who built a website hosts the live feed of the Falcam in South Bend. Little known fact: The Falcam is the City of SB’s most visited page.
- Competed in the AT&T Hackathon at Notre Dame on a team that built software using IBM Watson and facial recognition to conduct crowd sourced missing persons searches in the case of an AMBER alert. The program was called Sherlock…get it?
- Taught and helped to administer South Bend Code School camps and classes for students ages 7 to 18. We respect that she came back to her roots.
- Won the award for Indiana Intern of the Year in the high school category. No one was surprised that this young superstar started to receive accolades for her accomplishments.
- Won an award for CTE (Career and Technical Education) student of the year for her graphic design skills. She’s a one woman show ladies and gentlemen!
As Camisa prepares to go to college in the fall of 2018, she knows that it doesn’t really matter where she goes….as long as it isn’t Purdue….because the sky is the limit for her. (Okay, okay, even if she goes to Purdue)
Way to go Camisa! We’re proud of you!
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Alex Sejdinaj is a cofounder of South Bend Code School, GiveGrove, and Code Works. He loves building cool stuff that helps people.
