GS Women Engineers Teach Advanced Coding at All-Girls High School

Volunteers from the Goldman Sachs Women in Engineering group recently finished teaching a newly designed, advanced coding curriculum at the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women, an all-girls public high school in New York City. Goldman Sachs’ Women in Engineering (WE) first partnered with Urban Assembly in 2008 with a mentoring program, which has evolved into a semi-annual, 10-week course.

This year, over the course of 10 weeks, Goldman Sachs engineers taught students how to build an interactive game leveraging ProcessingJS, a visual programming language. This spring’s advanced course charted into new territory. Students mastered new skills such as object definition, animation, detecting mouse movement and more. Given the success of the program, Women in Engineering plans to offer both the introductory and advanced classes next year. “We could see all of their hard work shine in the final presentation,” said Patty Minaya, the school's principal. “Each student presented with pride and confidence in front of their classmates, friends and family members.”

WE Volunteers who helped create the advanced curriculum are excited by the strength of the program and look forward to sharing it with others interested in volunteering. “It’s a great asset for anyone looking to launch a similar class in one of the other regions,” said Khulan, an associate in Engineering. They encourage engineers seeking to launch similar programs to leverage their curriculum, and are looking to share with others throughout the firm.

Elizabeth Byrnes, head of Global Investment Research Technology and co-head of the Women in Technology Network, has been a supporter of the program since its inception. “It was great to see the finished products, but most importantly I loved hearing how they solved various coding challenges in creating their games. Clearly they were excited and proud,” Liz said after attending the closing reception for the initiative.