Nov. 15—Angelic Adkins has always had an interest in electronics. When she was younger and her laptop broke, she looked up every video she could on how to fix it.
"I ended up taking it apart, putting it back together and it ended up working," she said.
The Niagara Falls High School senior is now one of a handful of students expanding their technological prowess with a new college-level course the school is offering in partnership with Stanford University and Pipedreamers.
From September through February, Niagara Falls High School students are taking a Stanford University-level introduction to computer science course, the same one that 200 other enrolled Stanford students are taking.
The program is also supported by Pipedreamers, a startup app providing Ivy League-level resources to underserved communities co-founded by Buffalo native and Niagara Falls resident Dante Richardson.
In the three-day a week after school program, two Stanford professors and guest lecturers teach an Introduction to Computing course, instruction on how to use computer programing software so that students can learn code, build databases, design websites and use artificial intelligence tools.
While Stanford has put on similar programs in the Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California, this is the first program of its kind where Stanford offers dual-credit courses for technology. Those credits can be used toward a degree at any college in the county.
A graduate of Stanford's Accelerator for Learning, Richardson has been in the tech sector for the past seven years, working for companies like Liven and Bubble. He moved back to the region in part to launch a new start-up called Stooty Technologies.
"When I was coming back to the region, I decided to live in Niagara Falls instead of Buffalo because you can't grow the region of Buffalo-Niagara without Niagara Falls being at the front center," Richardson said. He added the city was built off of the innovation of Nikola Tesla, the social impact of Harriet Tubman and the entertainment factor of Marilyn Monroe.
School administrator Bryan Rotella said conversations first started in late August, too late for it to be a proper course. While the high school already offers computer science courses and 45 other courses ending in college credit, none of them have an AI component or are connected to a school outside Western New York with the pedigree of Stanford.
The program had an open enrollment period for anyone interested no matter the grade, though there was a preference for seniors. It started off with 20 students, now down to 14 coming consistently.