Hampton High School principal provided spark for CMU coding academy for high-schoolers

It all began with an email.

Hampton High School Principal Marguerite Imbarlina sent an email to Carnegie Mellon University.

“I thought of a computer science program because the students needed a better foundation of programming and coding,” Imbarlina said. “I needed support to build a framework, and who better to help me than CMU?”

Imbarlina wanted Carnegie Mellon to help guide her so the school could provide a curriculum for high school teachers.

“I wanted someone from CMU to help provide professional development for my computer science teacher and help us evaluate our curriculum to ensure it was current,” she said.

Carnegie Mellon professors Mark Stehlik and David Kosbie loved the idea. They grew the idea and co-founded CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) CS (Computer Science) Academy, offering online computer science courses in 2017. It is a computer science program for high school students.

Imbarlina was the motivation for the program, Kosbie said.

He and Stehlik collaborated with Imbarlina on a teacher conference with educators from the region to share and learn about CMU CS Academy.

Imbarlina said Kosbie helped her with a presentation to the Hampton School Board detailing how she wanted to frame the computer program for the high school students. Because of the collaboration with CMU, Imbarlina said she also is learning about programming and coding.

The connection enabled Hampton to host a conference for high school teachers about the CMU CS Academy. Imbarlina said it was important for Hampton High School to share this computer knowledge with other districts.

Since its inception, more than 300,000 students in Western Pennsylvania and 500,000 worldwide have utilized the program, which is designed to help teachers lead high-quality coding and programming lessons.

Students from every continent are participating in the curriculum that is offered in three languages, most recently Spanish.

One of the aspects is that it brings the experience of CMU into a global classroom. More than 2,000 schools in 66 countries use the program.

The academy program is designed for in-classroom use with a teacher present and for grades 9 through 12.

There are more than 15,000 teachers involved with the academy, which is available 365 days a year.

Imbarlina said part of her vision is to create a computer lab and to be able to continue to grow the computer science curriculum and for every student to have access to it.

“From that first email I sent, (Stehlik and Kosbie) have connected me with so many people,” said Imbarlina, who became principal in 2014. “They are so impressive. They give and give and give.”