2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering fields continue to fall short of proportionally representing people who identify as women, Black/African American, Latine/Hispanic, and/or Native/Indigenous in the US. It is clear that varied approaches are likely needed to solve this persisting problem. One promising avenue for increasing the representation of people from the aforementioned communities is by expanding students' perceptions of the usefulness and relevance of computing to other parts of life. Recently, researchers have proposed an interdisciplinary computer science course for high school students (grades 9-12). As computing continues to transform society through its extensive reach, it becomes increasingly important to guide students towards seeing how computing is not just confined to one subject in school, but indeed plays a role in almost every sector of modern life. This "CS+X" curriculum exposes students to the intersections of computing and subjects such as anthropology, psychology, and linguistics. By doing so, this curriculum tries to encourage students to connect their personal passions and goals with computing.
In this work, we build upon the previous success of this curriculum. We present our implementation of the CS+X curriculum with rising 8th and 9th grade students in an informal learning environment. This implementation is a collaboration between a team of researchers from a computer science department in an R1 university who developed the curriculum and a team from a Mathematics and Science Academy that offers education for students from the state of YYY. The academy provides outreach activities for younger students in the form of summer camps. We partnered to offer two new week-long CS+X summer camps, one for girls and one for students of all genders. Class material was simplified for a condensed timeline and a younger audience. Over the camp period, students learned basic programming skills and concepts via Python. Students also learned and analyzed the ways computing has enhanced “non-STEM” disciplines, such as anthropology, music, and agriculture.
Two cohorts of twenty students attended the camps. We evaluated the students' experience and their attitudes towards computing with a pre- and post- survey. The results from this survey showed that the students felt positively about the experience and computer science in general. We offer reflections from the summer camp instructors on how they modified the materials to suit their teaching styles, the informal learning setting, and a younger audience.
Our goal with presenting this work is to help envision a pathway in computing that uses an interdisciplinary approach to engage students from K-12, into higher education, and beyond.