Mikaila Esuke sits with the material in front of her when she is studying, she needs to see everything she is working with all at once, so she can put it together like a mechanical engineering problem. She is a night owl.
When Alexis Esuke studies she masters the material by copying it, and she thinks best in the morning.
The 17-year-old twins are headed to the University of Maryland this fall with an interest in computer science, stoked by an experience at a college camp designed to boost diversity in the field. Mikaila will study mechanical engineering, and Alexis will study chemical engineering.
The twins were co-valedictorians of their graduating class at Bowie High School, after officials couldn’t separate a winner after calculating their GPAs to the fifth decimal place, the Esukes said. In neighboring Anne Arundel County, the board of education recently decided to eliminate class rank, and its importance to college admissions is fading; the Esukes said it wasn’t something they were even thinking about until it was time to name a valedictorian.
“GPA is just a number, and it doesn’t tell how smart you are,” Alexis said.
If one had been a fraction above the other, they don’t think they would have cared too much.
What they do care about is computer science and volunteering to help other young women learn about computing at the CompSciConnect camp, a three-year camp program that aims to make a career pipeline for women and other underrepresented groups in the field. They entered the camp between fifth and sixth grades, completed the program and returned to tutor others.
Director of the Maryland Center for Women in Computing Jan Plane said she has gotten to watch the girls grow up in their time at the camp, maturing and taking deep interest in a number of subjects, not just computer science but engineering and extracurriculars such as tennis.
The program is for women and underrepresented groups in CompSci, and includes a two-week summer camp and monthly meetings throughout the school year, as well as a showcase project that is presented at Maryland Day in April, which celebrates the university.
In addition to high school students who come back to volunteer, the camp also has undergraduate ambassadors who help out.
“Seeing other people who have the same interests and are like you makes it much more palatable,” Plane said.
The curriculum builds up over time, Plane said, starting with basic programming. From learning binary, they learn number theory, then octal and hexadecimal, she said.
“Computer science is one area that has significant problems with diversity, both gender and racial diversity. And also it’s not required in most schools,” Plane said. “So there are a lot of children in this area that have no exposure to computing by the time they graduate from high school. And then they come to the university and often wouldn’t choose computer science because they feel like they’re behind.”
The Esukes think they would have still found their passion for computer science and engineering, but said the camp had made the field less uncomfortable to enter.
“We definitely wouldn’t be as emotionally and mentally strong going into it,” Mikaila.
