SEEDS
The Summer Environmental Education Development Program is an annual intensive 10-week mobile app development program meant to provide an opportunity for female college students to gain coding experience and work with a nonprofit.
This program has addressed three major issues since 2019:
1. The rising need for socially aware mobile applications. In the vast ocean of mobile applications there are very few which have a tangible social impact. Digital and mobile technology touches everyone's lives these days, so it's important for young computer science students to learn how harbor technology for good.
2. No available internships for college freshman/sophomore girls. Many companies prefer rising seniors or masters students. SEEDS offers proven success with a virtual program that offers students a place to gain experience with design thinking, to innovate, and to get inspired.
3. Very few females applying for mobile development positions. Mobile development is a new field and is not yet taught at universities as a core course; girls tend to wait for a guided approach to learn these concepts. The technical mentors and coaching in the SEEDS program will hopefully motivate the participants to choose mobile development courses and apply for related industry positions.
- Participants of the SEEDS program will work in teams of four to create an Android mobile application.
- This mobile application should be a vehicle to solve a social issue in your community. For example, one may create an app to motivate children to participate in local sustainability projects.
- The winner of the challenge will receive a cash prize from Dandilyonn.
- For summer 2023, the program will run from mid-June to mid-August (10 June 2023- 12 August 2023). There will be a coaching/mentoring session every Saturday during these weeks from 9 AM PST to 12 noon PST.
This program has addressed three major issues since 2019:
1. The rising need for socially aware mobile applications. In the vast ocean of mobile applications there are very few which have a tangible social impact. Digital and mobile technology touches everyone's lives these days, so it's important for young computer science students to learn how harbor technology for good.
2. No available internships for college freshman/sophomore girls. Many companies prefer rising seniors or masters students. SEEDS offers proven success with a virtual program that offers students a place to gain experience with design thinking, to innovate, and to get inspired.
3. Very few females applying for mobile development positions. Mobile development is a new field and is not yet taught at universities as a core course; girls tend to wait for a guided approach to learn these concepts. The technical mentors and coaching in the SEEDS program will hopefully motivate the participants to choose mobile development courses and apply for related industry positions.
Eligibility Requirements
Participants will work in team of FOUR: 2 rising sophomores and 2 rising juniors.
Eligibility:
Apply as a team. You can form a team with your friends currently in different (or the same) undergraduate colleges. Each participant will need to submit the application form separately and enter the names of the friends who would like to join the team. From past years, we have seen more success in the teams with participants from the same college or where the participants already know each other.
Or apply as an individual. Don't worry if you are applying just by yourself, we will find a team for you. Please leave the friends field empty. You can always make new friends!
Applications are now closed.
Eligibility:
- Rising sophomores/junior girls studying CS / Design in an undergrad program
- Experience with programming and basic knowledge of Java for Android development
- A working computer, good internet connection, reasonable English communication
- All participants will need to submit an application form and go through a small interview in order to qualify for the program.
Apply as a team. You can form a team with your friends currently in different (or the same) undergraduate colleges. Each participant will need to submit the application form separately and enter the names of the friends who would like to join the team. From past years, we have seen more success in the teams with participants from the same college or where the participants already know each other.
Or apply as an individual. Don't worry if you are applying just by yourself, we will find a team for you. Please leave the friends field empty. You can always make new friends!
Applications are now closed.
Program Details
- The challenge will run for 10 weeks, with 10 virtual sessions on Saturdays from 9 AM -12 noon PST.
- The online sessions will focus on technical and design thinking coaching.
- In addition, there will be deep dives on Mobile Application development and project management sessions with technical mentors.
- Participants will be expected to put in about 8-12 hours of work every week in addition to attending online sessions. In this time, they will be reviewing tutorials for Android, conducting interviews to understand user problems and day to day activities, developing and testing their mobile apps, and creating a business model for the project.
Online sessions will have two sections:
1. Design Thinking coaching: Conducted online in live sessions with Stanford GSB alumni. This coaching will give a framework for thinking creatively and creating an app that works for their target users.
2. Technical coaching: Conducted online at a time depending upon the team and the coach. This coaching will be technical support to guide students in learning about technology and solving any technical challenges that arise. Our coaches are software professionals working in the field of mobile application development.
The final session will be a virtual meeting where each team will present their experience in the past 10 weeks and share their final product. Leading industry professionals will judge the presentations and award the winning team with a cash prize.
Where are SEEDs alumni now?
Companies where our alumni received internships and jobs:
Amazon, Accenture, UChicago, AT&T, Wells Fargo, Oracle, Squarespace, LinkedIn, Slack, Goldman Sachs, Meta, Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), Adobe, Raahee, JP Morgan and Chase, CitiBank, Snap Inc, Microsoft, Disney, Salesforce, and many more places.
SEEDs has a strong alumni community and many girls return back to give back to the program.
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Our alums shared their experiences with us. This is what they had to say:
I have always wanted to develop a mobile app but I have no experience and was told I have to wait until end of my junior year to even start learning about mobile development. [SEEDS] empowers me to be able to learn iOS/Android development with other girls in CS/design (which is extremely hard to find, especially as a black girl in CS/Design, I have never seen someone who looks like me in my classes in my past 2 years. Ever.)" "One of my favorite parts of the Dandilyonn summer program was the weekly talks with industry mentors. It was a surprising add on as well as a welcome one. I would often get stuck completing a task or a problem, and I would question if this was the right path for me, but getting to speak to industry mentors really showed me that the struggles that I was going through were not uncommon and were in fact shared by many others." "I loved that SEEDS provided an experience to work on interesting, impactful projects with girls at similar experience levels. I learned a lot about design thinking, mobile development, and building a product in a team. The program helped me land my first internship and full time job, and I would definitely recommend the program!" |
"Having a guide through the Design Thinking process was incredibly helpful! My team started off with one app idea, but pivoted to a completely different approach to the topic after applying some of the strategies we learned in the Design Thinking portion of the program. Our second idea ended up getting better reception than the first! The mentorship aspect was also wonderful in getting us "unstuck" when we ran into problems with our app, from helping with specifics to simply providing us the right terms to Google. SEEDS was a great experience in getting to work on a self-driven project, but with guidance and accountability to hold you to a schedule and help you iterate for the best possible product." Many of us came into this summer program hoping to dip our toe into the world of mobile development but though this program, we were truly able to make a splash! Getting to collaborate with teammates to fully create an application from start to finish was amazing." "SEEDS is a really great program. It helped me a lot, especially in a way that I belong to non-CSE background. With SEEDS, I got to learn new design thinking and mobile development concepts as well as to apply them simultaneously which was not only interesting but also helped me in giving a start to my software career. SEEDS made it smooth for my transition from Mechanical student to finally software field. Also, the weekly sessions and interaction with industry people and experts were great." |