OSRE Catalyst

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Contributing to an open source project is a great way to build a technical portfolio, learn industry tools/practices, and have real-world impact – all while embedded in a collaborative community. The UC Santa Cruz Open Source Program Office (OSPO) wants to support more students on this path, especially those who have been minoritized in tech. We are partnering with an HBCU for a pilot summer program offering, with hopes to expand our reach in 2024.

Through a hybrid (in-person/remote) model, participating students will spend four weeks on the UCSC campus learning about open source, followed by four weeks remotely contributing to an open source project. Participants will be well-supported by our instructional team, as well as their small peer cohort, through community-building and mentorship spanning the full eight weeks.

Pilot Program Mentor & Developer

Topics: Education, Broadening Participation, Mentorship and Support, Community
Skills: communication, organization, GitHub/Markdown, basic web programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), open source contribution, version control/git workflow, mentorship, teaching
Difficulty: Novice to Intermediate
Size: Medium or Large (175 or 350 hours)
Mentors: Emily Lovell, James Davis

Given that this is a program pilot, your involvement and feedback will directly help shape its future!

Possible tasks:

Help cultivate a welcoming and supportive learning community
Support students in completing hands-on activities related to open source contribution (e.g. evaluating potential projects/communities, using git, setting up a development environment)
Develop technology-specific tutorials to introduce students to languages/libraries/etc. employed by their project
Offer mentorship around how to navigate documentation, large codebases, and contributor communities
Share your own input and perspective on what it’s like to be a newcomer to open source!

Strengthening Underserved Segments of the Open Source Pipeline

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Contributing to an open source project offers novices the opportunity to join a community of practitioners, build a technical portfolio, gain experience with industry tools and technologies, and have real-world impact. This project seeks to invite and support broader, more diverse participation in open source by supporting early contributors – especially those who have been historically minoritized within tech.

This work builds upon a number of existing projects with similar or overlapping goals. Some examples:

The Teaching Open Source (TOS) community, which brings together instructors teaching open source
The Professors’ Open Source Software Experience (POSSE) workshops and wiki, for faculty teaching - or wanting to teach - open source
Internships such as Google Summer of Code (GSoC), Outreachy, and the MLH Fellowship
Open Source Comes to Campus, offering student workshops on tools and culture [no longer active]
Google Code-in, inviting pre-university students to make open source contributions [no longer active]

This project will investigate gaps in currently available resources/programs and seek to address them, beginning with the exploration of engaging high school students with open source. Depending on early findings, this project could also entail the development of resources for independent learners and/or mentors.

Learning Resource Development + Repository-Building

Topics: Education, Broadening Participation, Mentorship and Support, Community Development
Skills: independent research, communication, organization, GitHub/Markdown, basic web programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
Difficulty: Novice to Intermediate
Size: Medium or Large (175 or 350 hours)
Mentors: Emily Lovell, James Davis
Contributor(s): Nandini Saagar

As an early contributor to this project, you will help gather information to inform the project direction – and then help bring it to life!

Possible tasks:

Meet with teachers and/or community members to identify new opportunities to engage with students (e.g. outside-of-school workshops, classroom visits, materials for teachers to use independently)
Evaluate and test existing learning activities with a high school audience in mind (e.g. consider necessary pre-requisites, time required, ideal activity format)
Evaluate and organize existing resources for newcomers (e.g. Up For Grabs, Hacktoberfest, internship/fellowship opportunites)
Help design and pilot new learning activities and/or workshops
Assist in curating an open source repository of the aforementioned resources
Conduct outreach to our target communities (e.g. brainstorm a catchy repository name, compose inviting and inclusive emails, design visual project elements)
Share your own input and perspective on what it’s like to be a newcomer to open source!

education | UCSC OSPO

OSRE Catalyst

Pilot Program Mentor & Developer

Strengthening Underserved Segments of the Open Source Pipeline

Learning Resource Development + Repository-Building