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Jaden State Student Volunteer From Jackson State University

Learning STEM through programming

Jaden is a software developer volunteer studying Compute Science at Jackson State University. His project is to develop an automated tool to post blogs from Google Sheet via programming. The entire project was developed using Python and Selenium. Here is a snippet of Jaden’s volunteer experience with Asha Hope Amanaki as a part of our STEM Education blog series. You  can also connect with Jaden on LinkedIn.

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

My  name is Jaden Stanton. I am 20 years old and a Computer Science major at Jason State University. I am a senior computer science major, so I’ll be graduating this December. I am not currently working. I’m from New Orleans, and whenever I go back home from business that’s where I go back to. My favorite thing about New Orleans is probably the people, and just the culture and how everybody is, it’s kind of like a big family, even with people who aren’t from there. Everybody is just so friendly and it’s a nice environment.

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

From my schooling, we have volunteer hours are a graduation requirement. I didn’t want to just do something random like any type of volunteering, I wanted to do something that also interested me so that I was fully into it, rather than something that was just to grab hours. When I was looking on Tiger Pulse or GivePulse website and stumbled upon the Python developer position for Asha Hope Amanaki, and I just went for it and reached out. 

Could you describe your volunteer role at Asha Hope Amanaki?

I volunteered at Asha Hope Amanaki as a Software Developer

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?

I think I had a good experience, it was very enriching since using Selenium and kind of the work I was doing, was something that I hadn’t done before, so it was new, but it was kind of familiar at the same time, so it was nice to learn something.

Did you get to learn anything from this experience?

Yeah, I think I learned, well using Selenium, that was my first time using that so that’s a new skill that I’ve picked up, as well as using the Google Cloud service, that’s also a new skill that I’ve learned through this experience. Working in a team with just new people and with the mentor has helped my communication skills.
 

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

Yeah, I definitely think I could apply what I learned since I learned new technical skills that I can apply and learned interpersonal skills like communication and working in a team. I think that can apply in school and even outside of school.
 

How was your experience with your mentor Drew?

I liked having Drew as a mentor and I feel like his style of mentoring  it fits well with me because it wasn’t super hands-on. He was observing where I was going with the direction and kind of pointing me in the right way. When we were working on the project I feel like there were times when I kind of came to a dead end and didn’t know where to go next and he would just throw an idea out there that got me started on the how to solve that problem rather than just like solving it for me so I think that was really good.

How do you think these mentoring opportunities compare to the resources you had when you learned in college?

I think compared to my schooling, we don’t really do a lot of hands-on programming, it’s more theory, that’s definitely a difference and just being able to work with someone on a project that I’m completely unfamiliar with the process of meeting requirements and making sure that everything is in line with what they want that’s definitely something that’s different.

What would you like to say to someone looking for a tech internship OR tech volunteer opportunity?
 
I would say that it is best to kind of volunteer somewhere where you are still making an impact, but you are also increasing your own skills at the same time. That leads into why I chose a tech volunteer rather than something like volunteering at the local school and reading to the kids. At the same time, you can still be helping people and providing a service, but you’re also benefitting from it by honing your own skills, just to help you in the future if you want to
volunteer again, or next time you want to lend those skills.
 
Given that this was a virtual volunteering experience how did it compare to other programming work in person ?
 
I think that the online experience made it better for me because I feel like, I have volunteered in person in the past and it’s like all the work has to be done right then and there, and then when you go home it’s kind of like at a standstill until the next time you meet. With this being online, I was able to continuously work between meetings all week and I think that just works better for me. 
 

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