Earlier this month, Westside High School’s Computer Science Program earned the College Board AP Computer Science Female Diversity Award. Westside earned this award by expanding girls’ access to and having a high representation of female students in AP Computer Science courses. 

Computer science student Alexandra Brown discussed her opinion on female diversity in the computer science program.

“I got into the computer science program at my old high school and stayed with it when I transferred to Westside,” Brown said, “I was super excited to hear that Westside has a good computer science program when I transferred. One thing I especially like in Westside’s program is Mr. Stejskal is super helpful and is willing to help no matter what, it makes everything easier.”

Math and computer science instructor Ryan Stejskal spoke about how he feels about the female representation and how he tries to encourage more girls to join the program. 

“Westside is one of three schools to win this award in Nebraska and the other two schools to win this award are Marian and Mercy, [private girls’ schools],” Stejskal said. “So, obviously we are excited because it means in the last year we have gotten more and more girls in the computer science program. I always tell my students that the computer doesn’t care if you’re a guy or a girl, but, of course, there are a lot of social pressures that tend to make computer science students be predominantly male so we really want to encourage more females to join our computer science program.”