Windstream Employees Volunteer at Coding Camp to Inspire Future Tech Leaders
A group of dedicated Windstream employees volunteered at UA Little Rock’s Windstream Girls CODE Camp, inspiring the next generation of tech innovators with engaging activities and guidance.
Seventh and eighth grade students attended the summer coding camp, made possible with a sponsorship from Windstream, July 22-26 in the Donaghey College of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at UA Little Rock.
Students receive hands-on instruction and attend seminars to learn more about opportunities available for students in computer science, information science, and web design. Students also attend counseling and advising sessions to assist students in preparing for college.
During the day, they worked with Thomas Wallace, senior instructor of information science and UA Little Rock’s coordinator of the Web Design and Development program and information technology minor. Participants learned about three coding languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) as well as web development and web design skills.
During a special visit by Windstream employees, Christie Arendall, senior solutions architect, had the students split into teams and write out technical instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She then created the sandwiches following each team’s instructions to the letter, much to the students’ delight.
“This activity was all about teaching students technical writing skills,” Arendall said. “The activity was so that students can learn that a computer is only as good as the information you put in it. The computer is not intuitive. Unless you tell it every single step to take, it doesn’t know how to do something correctly. I like to see that there are so many students who are spending a week of their summer trying to think about their future.”
Mike Stafford, vice president of integration at Windstream and the chair of the Leadership Council of the Donaghey College of STEM, was excited to see the level of talent being displayed by the students in the room.
“I am impressed that kids at this age already have some experience in coding,” Stafford said. “If that experience can turn into college degrees and potential internships with companies like Windstream and eventually employment, we would love to have them stay in the state of Arkansas.”
Sara Lary, staff manager of the law enforcement support center and network security operations center at Windstream, is a UA Little Rock alumnus who graduated in 2004.
“I helped sponsor the first Windstream Girls Coding Camp at UA Little Rock back in 2018,” Lary said. “My daughter attended a girls coding camp at UA Little Rock in 2017, and I saw how my daughter responded. I told Windstream we needed to sponsor this coding camp. It’s rewarding to see the kids learn during this camp. It will also give them the building blocks needed to build a foundation for their future from this experience.”
Brianna Lewis, Lary’s daughter who is now a film major at UCA, told the junior high students how attending the coding camp had an impact on her life.
“That camp was my first experience with coding,” Lewis said. “Originally, I didn’t want to live in Arkansas when I went to college. When I came here, I saw they had a lot of tech. I felt very accomplished when I was able to create my website. I would say it was a fun experience to see that there was all this developing technology that I didn’t know that Arkansas had, and it made me want to keep pursuing it to see how much further it would advance.”
In addition to the visit from Windstream employees, the campers also took a field trip to CJRW, an advertising agency in Little Rock, to learn about careers available in digital media, computer science, and technology. They also took a tour of UA Little Rock’s Emerging Analytics Center to learn about opportunities in virtual reality, augmented reality, and cybersecurity research.
