Application Spotlight: Gloria
Hi everyone!
As October comes to a close, I still can’t get over my incredible experience as a hackNY fellow during the summer of 2024! With the 2025 applications now open, I know many of you may be wondering what makes a strong hackNY application. While there’s no exact formula, showcasing your desire to make a meaningful impact with technology—along with your ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with other passionate fellows—can really set you apart.
I hope sharing my final application, which got me into the 2024 class, will be helpful. Good luck!
Tell us about a coding project or a developer community project you’ve built that you are most proud of:
The AICS Registration Portal is a parent-facing portal used to help register students for an online computer science camp, with the app being separated into separate frontend and backend apps. The frontend is implemented using TypeScript with a React.js/Next.js stack, while the backend is written in Express.js/TypeScript, leveraging a noSQL Firebase database. We used an agile development approach using the scrum framework to structure our development of the portal. We separated sprints based on dates (weekly sprints), as well as creating sprints prioritized for the initial release (Beta release sprints). Features and tasks were divided on Github Projects using Github Issues, and features worked on included creating the different class subpages first (including functioning backend endpoints to add/remove children from classes), authenticating and ensuring all users were logged onto valid, authenticated Google accounts, creating an admin and teacher view to see all classes, create a class, and manage students.
The biggest challenge surrounded organizing our code to minimize repetition and compartmentalizing our code into readable parts. While we were coding, we noticed that there was a lot of repetition of creating components or certain functions to validate inputs. As a result, there was a lot of revamping and reorganizing existing code. Perhaps defining the structure of our code would have been a better solution to organize the files. Additionally, I struggled a lot with working out the backend endpoints - some data did not send to the database (Firebase) or was sent over incorrectly (wrong fields or wrong numbers), and the process of debugging and figuring out what parts were missing in the endpoints took a long time. Finally, the most infamous challenge that me and several of my teammates experienced was Firebase authentication, which took a lot of researching documentation and videos to finally have it work for our registration system. Overall, stepping back and researching documentation or looking at example code helped me overcome and debug the issues I was experiencing. Looking at the code using a different lens or asking for a helping hand was often my solution to resolving any issues (it’s very helpful having a second opinion on your code!)
Why did you build this project? What about it matters to you?
My teammates and I embarked on developing this project with the primary goal of streamlining and enhancing registration processes. Having previously served as an operations member for AICS, I experienced firsthand the tedious and time-consuming nature of registering children for courses. Before the inception of the portal, the process involved navigating through a Google Spreadsheet filled with student responses and scores. Operations members had to manually link each email to a registration link for the corresponding course, considering scores and preferences. This manual effort consumed valuable time that could have been directed toward tasks like monitoring and responding to parent emails.
As a part-time CS instructor, I am driven by the belief that education should be accessible to all students. The registration portal we developed enables AICS staff to handle a larger volume of registrations without the need for manual data entry or email correspondence. Through the automation of these processes, we not only increase enrollment but also reduce the likelihood of errors caused by human oversight. After the registration portal, we were able to enroll 80 students in our classes without the need for manual data entry. The efficiency of the registration process, combined with its user-friendly interface, serves as an incentive for students to enroll in our CS classes, further enhancing the accessibility of our courses to a broader audience.
The impact of our project extends beyond the operational efficiency it brings. By making the registration process quick and easy, we contribute to breaking down barriers to education. This not only benefits the organization by increasing enrollment but also empowers students with a seamless pathway to access valuable computer science courses. Ultimately, our project aligns with the broader mission of AICS: fostering inclusivity and accessibility in Computer Science education.
Why apply to hackNY specifically?
I have always wanted the opportunity to discuss different social issues and different development tools and technologies with other passionate and innovative individuals. I thrive from communicating and discussing ideas with others. HackNY’s smaller and intimate community allows its fellows to get to know each other on a deeper level and discuss complex issues in today’s world. Additionally, I believe that most developer projects I have worked on don’t discuss the impact of their projects enough. When I work on a project, I often emphasize and think about the customers/clients behind the work - who are the customers, and what is the impact of our project on those people? I hope that by chatting with the hackNY community that I am able to understand the different purposes of work and the impact of our work on different communities.
HackNY also gives its fellows the opportunity to explore NYC’s tech culture/environment. As a current student at NYU, I am always curious about how to engage with my interests in the city. With hackNY’s mix of events, speaker series, and more, I am able to interact with more people in the city who do work that I am interested in. There are a lot of fun things to do in NYC, and I would love to adventure around in the city with other hackNY fellows and getting to know others within the tech community. Overall, hackNY gives me the opportunity to learn and grow as a developer, as well as make an impact on the world and on the people I care about.
Tell us about societal issues that you'd like to solve, why they matter to you, and what you've done to address them․
In my freshman year of high school, I began volunteering by working as a Teacher Assistant at Chinese School, helping monitor student behaviour and giving out grades, as well as leading a Martial Arts class after school. While I never thought I would be passionate about instructing and educating, these experiences made me realize my passion for teaching, education, and education accessibility. In college, I worked as a CS instructor at a non-profit organization. Currently, I teach part time as a CS instructor for KTByte, instructing students aged 8-16 basic Java concepts using the Processing library, and engaging the next generation of students in fun coding projects.
As a CS student, I still notice a stark gender gap in STEM fields, especially in Computer Science and even in the classes I teach. For example, in my university Introduction to Computer Science class, the vast majority of people I saw were men. In the class I teach, 3 of the 4 students are boys. When I talk with my UMass Amherst friends who major in computer science, they say the vast majority of their Computer Science classes consist of male students. All these classes exemplify that the vast majority of the CS field is dominated by men, which discourages gender minorities from pursuing a career in Computer Science or STEM. As a woman in Computer Science, it saddens me to see this uneven distribution. As an educator, I hope that my presence as a woman CS educator sets a precedent for other girls and gender minorities to pursue a career in computer science. I hope that at HackNY I will be able to discuss this gender gap and ways that instructors can talk about it with students, starting at a classroom level.
I wonder when/how we can see more gender minority representation in Computer Science classes and corresponding fields. Perhaps there is not a lot of discourse about inclusivity and diversity at the classroom level. As a CS student, I hardly hear discussions about diversity or inclusion within classrooms, and perhaps having a conversation about this in the classroom is the starting point of bridging the gender gap in STEM fields. While I am not a teacher at the university level, I do teach young students. I hope that my presence as a woman instructor in CS sets as a role model for other women/gender minorities to pursue CS. As a HackNY fellow, I would hope to discuss diversity and inclusion in my computer science classes to hopefully bridge the gender gap starting at a classroom level.
