Hackathon

HCC’s Third Annual Nonprofit Hackathon: Fostering Creativity

gsehgal2 — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 19:44:42 +0000

HCC’s Third Annual Nonprofit Hackathon: Fostering Creativity gsehgal2 Fri, 11/10/2023 - 14:44

On Saturday, October 21, Honors College Connects (HCC) proudly hosted its third annual Nonprofit Hackathon. The day was filled with enthusiasm, creativity, and a desire to make a difference. Honors College students formed dynamic teams to brainstorm and provide innovative solutions to challenges faced around the community every day.

Every fall Honors College Connects hosts the HCC Hackathon in partnership with local nonprofits. Students divide themselves into groups based on their interests to tackle a challenge posed by the nonprofit partners. Each group is tasked with creating a unique solution as a team, utilizing feedback from other groups throughout the day.

While the event focused on giving back to the community, it also fostered connections among Honors College students. Amidst the fast-paced brainstorming and problem-solving sessions, participants took a break to enjoy lunch, and took photos to remember the day.

Chandresh, an HCC mentor, initially planned on playing the role of mentor but found himself actively participating and leading a team. Immersed in the Hackathon's ethos, he reflected on his connection to the human-centered design approach: “Being both a former HCC attendee and a current mentor, I've always valued this method."

Throughout the day, several ideas emerged, and one that stood out for Chandresh's team was the potential of Facebook Messenger, especially given its resonance with older audiences. Drawing from his background as a project manager, he steered his team through the brainstorming sessions and discussions. He noted, "Engaging with the varied challenges that nonprofits face always offers a fresh perspective. It's both meaningful and intriguing."

Cy J Pabis, with memories of the previous year's Hackathon and their role as an HCC Peer Mentor, eagerly dived into this year's event. "I was keen on assisting those newer to the HCC format," he shared. With a deep-rooted familiarity with the human-centered design, Cy's team was agile, adapting their approach based on feedback. One of the highlights for Cy was the chance to interact with and offer insights to another team, underlining the Hackathon's collaborative essence. Reflecting on the experience, he said, "The Hackathon brings to light the diverse aims and scopes of our local nonprofit sector. For instance, I was deeply moved by a nonprofit's mission to provide tutoring to children in disadvantaged communities."

The nonprofits that participated this year were:

Computer CORE
Formed Families Forward
KEEN Greater DC
Reading Partners
Shepherd's Center of Northern Virginia

Topics

Honors College

Hackathon

Honors College Connects

2022 Annual Hackathon

Wasiq Muhammad Muhammad Ali — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 19:29:39 +0000

2022 Annual Hackathon Wasiq Muhammad… Fri, 10/07/2022 - 15:29

On October 1, Honors College Connects (HCC) held its second annual Hackathon. The Hackathon is an opportunity for students to come up with creative solutions to issues that various local nonprofit organizations face. This year’s participating nonprofits included:

Annandale Christian Community for Action, a church-affiliated voluntary organization assisting low-income families in the Annandale/Bailey’s Crossroads area;
Shelter House, a domestic violence shelter;
League of Women Voters Fairfax, a nonpartisan voter participation organization;
NV Rides, a network of volunteers providing personal transportation to seniors;

Sustainable Mason President’s Park Greenhouse, an organization that provides fresh produce to the George Mason University community;
Latino Economic Development Center, an organization that provides financial education to Latino & other underserved communities.

The students also enjoyed a catered lunch together and took group photos.

First-time Honors student participant Farhan Babar worked with Sustainable Mason, creating marketing material to promote their free produce options. He recounts one challenge his team encountered: “We tried doing so many things all at once that we ended up becoming separated. We weren’t even able to finish most of the things we were trying to do individually.” Despite the challenges of working in a large, ambitious team, Babar says that he enjoyed getting to know other Honors College students that day.

Sebastian Rodionov, another newcomer to the Hackathon, worked with NV Rides to create an advertisement campaign persuading recent retirees to become volunteer drivers for local seniors. He shares that for his team, “generally speaking, we did not run into any challenges at the Hackathon. I provided ideas and bounced them to other members for feedback. Our team also had a professional graphic designer who created a gorgeous Facebook post/sample flyer from scratch.” For Rodionov, “the best part of the Hackathon was seeing the end products of all the other groups and reflecting on all we accomplished that day.”

Topics

Hackathon

Honors College Connects

Honors College

Nonprofits

Addressing Nonprofit Challenges: Honors College Connects Hosts Its First-ever Hackathon

Daniel Hyunbin Chung — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:56:51 +0000

Addressing Nonprofit Challenges: Honors College Connects Hosts Its First-ever Hackathon Daniel Hyunbin Chung Tue, 11/16/2021 - 10:56

Two dozen Honors College students and four hours on a Saturday is a recipe for great new ideas, as demonstrated at Honors College Connects’ first-ever Nonprofit Hackathon. This event brought three local and one international nonprofit into a space with motivated student volunteers, who participated in a rapid-fire guided challenge in human-centered design – making and testing rapid prototypes with an eye towards creating user-friendly ideas. Over the course of the day, the students bonded with each other, networked with their nonprofit partner, addressed challenges with brilliant creativity, and had fun giving back to the community.

 Honors College Connects (HCC) is a student-led program that connects students with local nonprofits, giving them the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience and develop leadership skills. According to HCC student leader Elizabeth Fortson, the main goal of the HNRS 261 Honors College Connects class is "to work with nonprofit partners to solve some kind of strategic question that the nonprofit has."

Some of these questions can take multiple weeks or months of brainpower and teamwork to tackle, but the Hackathon sought to tackle something different. Rather than taking a whole semester, the Hackathon gave one day to solving smaller topics. 

In addition to creating a space to solve these smaller topics, the event reached students who are not able to participate in the semester-long HCC classroom experience. Brandon Roca, another student leader, noted that, “as a leadership team we saw a need for [these] students to get more involved and see what human centered design is all about.”  

Drawing on the multidisciplinary strengths of the Honors College's learning community, HCC is able to take on projects that do not fit neatly in a single discipline or field. Fortson says of this that “many of these problems aren’t in the realm of something a government major or a biology major would focus on… so having all these different multidisciplinary students brings a lot of different perspectives in terms of what we should do, how we should do it, why it would work, why it wouldn’t work.”

The morning of the Hackathon, students had four hours to rapidly respond to the issues the four nonprofits faced. The nonprofits featured in Fall 2021 were FACETS, Dulles Area Transportation Association (DATA), the Starfish Foundation, and Veterans Moving Forward. FACETS serves individuals and families who are homeless, low-income, or at-risk in Fairfax County, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; DATA finds solutions to transportation issues faced in the Dulles area and promotes sustainable transportation options; the Starfish Foundation provides means for at-risk Ecuadorian youth to achieve post-secondary education and strives to empower these students; and Veterans Moving Forward provides service dogs and canine therapy services to veterans with physical and/or mental health challenges at no cost to the veteran.

Roca remarked that the rapid-fire format of a Hackathon gave the nonprofit partners chances to benefit by the "multiple perspectives" that Honors College students bring to the table. At the event, students helped the nonprofits with a range of changes, including logo design, public relations, outreach to different demographics, and evaluation of innovative programs.

The impact of the Hackathon was significant. The nonprofits involved were able to take the student-designed ideas and apply them to their own operations. Fortson noted that her favorite part of the Hackathon was watching the lively energy of the event, which was characterized by students running around and solving problems, resulting in amazing, fully-developed ideas that came from that chaos in a very short period of time.

Roca says that the HCC class will spend the rest of the semester working on some bigger projects for these same nonprofits - the kind that are not solved in a day. Honors College Connects plans to offer a Hackathon each Fall semester moving forward, extending the reach of the program and encouraging students who are not in the Honors College Connects classes to make an impact.

Topics

Practicing professionalism prepares students for success

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 19:16:34 +0000

Practicing professionalism prepares students for success Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/18/2021 - 15:16

Engineering and technology college courses cover the problem-solving skills successful students will need in their careers. But what those courses don’t always cover is how to get a job.

Ximena Perez hopes to help her fellow SHPE members learn about networking and the career opportunities it opens up. Photo provided.

For senior computer science major and Honors College student Ximena Perez, she found her community in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) as a member, president, and now as vice president of the student organization.

Perez, who was born in Peru and moved to Virginia when she was 3-years-old, came to Mason because of its proximity to home and its affordability. Her freshman year, she knew she wanted to join Latino organizations, and she found SHPE through connections with former executive board members.

“I gained a lot of mentors when I joined,” says Perez. “It was super awesome to see and learn from fellow engineering students.”

One important lesson Perez learned from her mentors and hopes to bring to current members is the value of professionalism. At her first SHPE annual conference in fall 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio, the organization's professional development side resonated. “The conference was overwhelming but exciting, there’s a huge career fair with recruiters from big-name companies, and I realized there’s a whole world of networking opportunities out there,” says Perez.

And Perez dove in. She sought out opportunities to test her skills and get recognized. One avenue she found was hackathons. “I completed a few hackathons in the last couple of years, like Mason’s Patriot Hacks and Georgetown’s Hoya Hacks,” she says. “At Hoya Hacks, I got to work with students from different schools to create an interactive app for DACA recipients. It was great to meet new people and work on something I was passionate about.”

These types of events are gold mines for building your network and testing your skills, says Perez. And her goal as a leader of SHPE has been to illustrate their value.

While Perez feels her computer science education has provided the foundation for developing her technical skill, SHPE helped her learn how to build her brand and pitch her skills to recruiters. “What you learn in classes prepares you for what you’re doing, but SHPE helps with actually getting the job.”

Marrying her two skills together, Perez feels prepared to enter the workforce after her graduation in May. “My time at Mason has taught me so much—in my courses, in SHPE, and in the Honors College, I’ve been given all of the tools I need.”

Topics

computer science

student organizations

Hackathon

Honors College