Preparing high schoolers for computer science careers

Students at Lane Tech College Prep are jumpstarting their future in computer science in a partnership between the Chicago public high school and the UIC College of Engineering.

About 30 Lane Tech College Prep students are enrolled in a pilot course in computer science offered by the College of Engineering that will give them high school and college credit. Photo: Roberta Dupuis-Devlin/UIC Photo Services

About 30 Lane Tech students are enrolled in a pilot course that will give them both high school and college credit at the end of the year.

The course, CS 111 (Program Design I), is a collaboration between Dale Reed, clinical professor of computer science, and Daniel Law, chair of computer science at Lane Tech.

Law handles the day-to-day teaching, collaborating with Reed to create tests and assignments. UIC provides online support from teaching assistants.

“We are excited to see the investment into STEM education at Lane and see computer science as a pivotal field in our increasingly technological world,” Reed said.

Sixty-three percent of new jobs in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) are in computer science, Reed told the group on a visit to campus last semester.

“I can’t tell you what kind of jobs you’ll be doing, because things are changing in computer science at an exponential rate,” he told the students.