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Learning STEM through programming

Drew is a volunteer mentor for Jaden Staten with Asha Hope Amanaki and has mentored a Compute Science at Jackson State University student to develop an automated tool post blogs from Google Sheet. The entire project was developed using Python and Selenium. Drew works as a MET at Intel Hillsboro. Here is a snipped of Drew’s volunteer experience with Asha Hope Amanaki as a part of our STEM Education blog series. You  can also connect with Drew on LinkedIn.

Hi Drew, Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Tell us a little about yourself to our readers?

My  name is Drew Aho. I am a Manufacturing Equipment Technician at Intel, Hillsboro, Oregon. I have been there for about a yaer now, but I have been programming various languages since I was thirteen, so I over a decade-plus of experience in programming. 

How did you come to know about the STEM volunteer opportunity?

Intel uses a tool called Benevity, which is a volunteer opportunity posting board. If people have a volunteer opportunity they will post on it and those who are interested within Intel will apply for it. This opportunity fit well with my background in programming and hence I applied for it. 

Could you describe your volunteer role at Asha Hope Amanaki?

Asha Hope Amanaki wanted an automated tool that could post blogs for them automatically through a form filled by volunteers. The tool was being developed by Jaden Staten and my responsibility was to provide feedback when the need arose or if he got stuck and provide pointers for improvement. He know what he was doing so it was easy to mentor him on the project. 

What was the project that the two of you working  on?

Asha Hope Amanaki wanted an automated tool that could post blogs for them automatically . This community project thus involved scarping Google Sheet that contained responses of volunteers to Google Forms sent to them. Using that data we had to create a WordPress post ensuring it is formatted properly ready to be published by the admin. The trickiest part was to ensure the data gets properly formatted to ensure the blog looks nice. 
 

How was your experience working with Asha Hope Amanaki and the volunteer opportunity in general?

This was my first volunteer opportunity, so I had not come with a lot of expectations, however, overall it was positive and pleasant to be able to come in and help resolve issues. There was a new library called Selenium that I have never worked with. It is used to interact with web browser just like a human would to automate tasks. The documentation was good, so it was easy to learn it. 

Although you were a STEM Mentor, did you get to learn anything from this experience?

Most certainly Communication! Due to the virtual nature of the opportunity there were challenges discussing issues on the digital screen. I had to be more communicative to ensure i was able to convey my message to Jaden in a way that made sense.  

Did volunteering on a STEM project help you in your job or career?

Unfortunately, for my current role, there is no prerequisite for programming whatsoever. Programming right now is more like a hobby. in that sense it did help me think out loud and to solve problems

Why  should professionals like you spend their time volunteering on STEM projects?

One thing, its always nice to give back to people especially if it involves something that you are good at. For me at least – I derive a lot from that — plus keeps me sharp

Do you believe you had an impact on the mentee?

When you are working in the real world, you are always going to be working with people and I guess this was good a test as any to work towards a common goal. So in terms of working together I absolutely thing it would have prepared them for a programming job. If we were to work on another project, I definitely see a lot of opportunity for the relationship to grow stronger. Mentorship is a huge part of youth development

How do you think these mentoring opportunities compare to the resources you had when you learned STEM Programming?

When I was in school, I had no mentorship whatsoever. We had to learn from Google. I would have cherished to have a mentorship if I could go back in time. 

Finally, what’s next with Asha Hope Amanaki?

Well because of positive experience I had mentoring Jaden, I am going to mentor another student on yet another tool for a college graduate. The new project is more challenging and in a programming language that I have never used before. So I looking forward to working on it!

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