This will be our final edition of CS Undergraduate Events & Things for 2022! Thank you so much for taking the time to engage with us. We wish you all a successful finals week and a refreshing winter break! See you in 2023!!

Looking for an internship or a job?

Winter Break is a great time to plan for spring hiring, and SuccessWorks will help you get ready!

Visit the CS Advising Office (Tower 2, 4th Floor, Room 4217) on Wednesday, December 14^th from 1-4pm with your resume and career questions.

Availability is first come, first serve, and meetings will be limited to 15 minutes if there is a line. 

A course shows “available seats”. Why can’t I enroll? If a course is waitlisted and shows “available seats”, those seats will be given to students on the waitlist. If you enroll or swap into a course that is waitlisted with available seats, you will be placed on the waitlist.

When are seats given away? Waitlists are currently managed daily. Starting on December 19, waitlists will be processed on Mondays and Thursdays. Make sure to check your wisc.edu email address on Tuesdays and Fridays if you are on a waitlist for any notice regarding enrollment. Daily waitlist processing will resume the week of January 16.

How do I enroll? You will not be automatically enrolled in the course – you must enroll through the enroll app. The waitlist invites expire after 1-2 days, so make sure to enroll right away.

What if I absolutely need this course? Please work with your advisor. Advisors cannot let you off a waitlist in appointments, but can discuss options with you.

COMPSCI 639 Lecture 001: Foundations of Data Science

Instructor: Jelena Diakonikolas

Description: This course teaches theoretical foundations of data science, focusing on the computational aspects. The tentative list of topics includes: Gaussian random variables, central limit theorem, and concentration inequalities; applications of concentration inequalities in statistical learning; null hypothesis significance testing, p-values, multiple hypothesis testing, false discovery rates, A/B testing, causality; maximum likelihood estimation; bootstrap; linear regression and classification, cross-validation, model selection; optimization with gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent. Course will also have examples and a programming component in Python. Python programming is not covered by this course; having taken either classes that cover Python programming or some of the introductory CS programming classes is assumed.

Prerequisites:

A course in linear algebra (Math 320, 340, 341, or 375)

AND

A course in probability/stats (MATH/STAT 309 or MATH/STAT 310 or STAT 311 or STAT 312 or STAT 324 or MATH/STAT 431 or CS/STAT 471)

OR

Instructor consent

To see the Spring 2022 version of the course: Click Here

Want to teach kids in Madison about Computer Science next semester?

If so, check out CS 402 -- Introducing Computer Science to K-12 Students.  

In this 2-credit course, you'll work in a small team with other UW students to co-lead a weekly CS club for 4th-5th graders at a nearby Elementary school or Community Center.  

The clubs focus on teaching kids basic CS concepts and how to create projects (e.g., animated stories and games) in Scratch. For those of you who haven't heard of Scratch, it is a highly visual programming environment specifically designed for novice programmers. Scratch will be easy for you to learn quickly -- it has the control structures, variables, and lists you're all familiar with. If you're curious, you should check it out at http://scratch.mit.edu -- it is free and has lots of examples.

The UW "lecture" will be held from 5:30 - 7:00 on Wednesday evenings. In that "lecture" time, you'll acquire skills to help you run a more effective and rewarding club.

Signing up for this course is a commitment; to run great clubs, we need to precisely match UW students with different sites and we need to ensure we have the right number of UW students (usually 3) at each club. If you drop the course shortly before the semester starts (or even worse, after the semester begins), you may disrupt the success of one of the clubs.  

You should NOT sign up for this course as a placeholder in your schedule if you think you might not stay enrolled.

You will be responsible for co-leading (with 2 other UW students) the weekly club at a local site. To sign up for this course, you should be fairly comfortable speaking loudly and clearly in front of a group of about 16 kids. You'll need to have free time in your schedule on one afternoon each week. The day of the week you are available will determine which site you volunteer at. The clubs start about 3 weeks after our UW classes begin.

When you enroll in CS 402, you will pick a particular (lab) off-site section that corresponds to a particular club day and time. Each section has two meetings scheduled: a common lecture Wednesday evenings from 5:30 - 7:00 and an off-site meeting that corresponds to your club day and approximate starting time (the club times are somewhat different than the lab times to account for some of your transportation time to the club). To travel to your club you can carpool, bike, bus or (if your site is far enough away) Uber/Lyft. We will talk about transportation in our first lecture.  

For Spring 2023, we have the following clubs:

Lab 301: Sun Madison Children's Museum (100 N Hamilton St) 2:30 - 3:30

Lab 310: Mon Marquette Elementary (1501 Jenifer St.) 1:00 - 2:00

Lab 313: Mon Eagle School (5454 Gunflint Trail, Fitchburg) 3:25 - 4:25

Lab 321: Tues Stephens Elementary (120 S Rosa Rd) 2:30 - 3:30

Lab 322: Tues  Goodman Community (214 Waubesa St.) 3:00 - 4:00 ** Current Openings **

Lab 324: Tues Van Hise Elementary (246 S. Segoe) 3:25 - 4:25 

             OR Thoreau Elementary (3870 Nakoma Rd.) 3:30 - 4:30 ** Current Openings **

Lab 325: Tues Shorewood Elementary (1105 Shorewood Blvd.) 3:40 - 4:40 ** Current Openings **

Lab 331: Wed Crestwood (5930 Old Sauk Rd) 2:30 - 3:30

             OR Anana (6323 Woodington Way) 2:30 - 3:30 ** Current Openings **

Lab 332: Wed Randall Elementary (1802 Regent St.) 2:40 - 3:40

Lab 334: Wed Goodman Community (214 Waubesa St.) 4:00 - 5:00

CS 402 is a rewarding and unique experience at UW. Our clubs have been incredibly successful for the past few years and many kids, parents, and teachers are interested in learning more. We usually teach more than 200 kids about CS each semester!

If you are not sure whether or not you'd like to do this, please watch this video that shows off how much fun the kids have in our clubs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P87zSkOwLkI

QUESTIONS: Send an email to Professor Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau at dusseau@cs.wisc.edu

We Hope You Have a Spectacular Winter Break!

Check back in January for details about upcoming events in Spring 2023!

Please remember to take time for your mental and physical health and have a restful and restorative break!

Thinking Ahead: UW-Madison CS Plus One Pathway (POP)

Thinking Ahead: MS Data Science (MDS) Information Session

AccessComputing: Internship, Mentoring, Tutoring, and Conference Opportunities for CS Students with Disabilities!

Are you a computing student with a disability?  

Looking for an internship? Want to connect with peers and mentors with disabilities?  AccessComputing can help you do that. 

AccessComputing, a National Science Foundation funded Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance, provides mentoring and funding for career development activities for students with disabilities in computing-related fields.

This includes:

MENTORING: Through our online community, students and mentors discuss a variety of topics. It is a place to connect with others to share your successes, ask for suggestions regarding any issues that may arise for you related to your disability, education or employment, and to support other team members when they need help brainstorming solutions.

TUTORS: Struggling with a computing course? Please contact us about tutor support. Each term, AccessComputing can fund a limited number of tutors for project participants.

CONFERENCES: Interested in attending a conference related to computing, diversity, or professional development?  AccessComputing may be able to provide funding for travel, registration, or accessibility-related costs. While we can't send every student to every event, we do fund many students each year to attend events like Grace Hopper, the Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, SIGCSE, and the Computing Research Association's Widening Participation events, among others. 

RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS: Every year AccessComputing funds students with disabilities to participate in the Computing Research Association's Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates Program.

WHEN CAN YOU APPLY?

AccessComputing does not have an application deadline; because of the way our funding is designed, we can accept applications at any time throughout the life of the AccessComputing program - and guess what? We've been around for more than 15 years and have been successful enough that we're on our fifth consecutive NSF grant!

Find the student team member application and more information at the AccessComputing web page.

CS Internships Abroad with IIP!

The International Internship Program offers international internships with organizations all over the world. Applications are open for virtual spring internships and some in-person summer internships! 

Spring virtual internships and in-person summer opportunities for CS students: (Deadlines vary)

• FIEN Foundation (Tanzania) Virtual Web Design Internship (December 4 deadline)
• Health Access Connect (Uganda) Media & Evaluation Internship (December 4 deadline)
• Poatek Software Development & Data Science Internship in Brazil. IT Consulting & Software firm providing $1500/month stipend, airfare & housing (December 11 deadline)
• UTokyo Summer Internship Program in Kashiwa, Japan. Scholarship provided (January 6 deadline)
• Infosys Instep Internship in India. Compensation provided (January 2023 deadline)
• Sakae Internship Program in Japan. Airfare and housing provided (Rolling deadline)

Have more questions or want more information? Get in touch with us at internships@international.wisc.edu or make an appointment

Data Science Club: Project Leader Positions

The Data Science Club is looking to welcome about five club Project Leaders to oversee new data science project groups. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.