Siena College CSforAll

The Siena CSforAll team is committed to broadening participation in engaging high school computer science classes in New York State.  One of the biggest obstacles to offering high school CS classes is finding qualified teachers.  To address this problem, we work with high school teachers from over 37 school districts who are certified in other subject areas and often have little or no background in CS, preparing them to teach CS at their high schools.  We provide teachers with full curriculums and professional development (PD) during the summers and school year so that they can offer Siena College’s new high school level Discovering CS course or Siena’s college level dual-enrollment CSIS110 Introduction to CS with Python and Multimedia course.  As part of the PD, we cover research based strategies that promote diversity and equity-based educational practices, and we have worked with teachers to develop custom plans for broadening participation in their CS classrooms.  We are also creating new pathways to NYS teacher CS certification, one for pre-service and one for in-service teachers.  Our CS educators community is enriched by Siena College’s annual high school programming contest and the NY-Capital District CSTA chapter. 

Through this programming, we are building a sustainable professional learning community of CS high school and college educators that engage with each other regularly in a variety of contexts as they work towards the shared goal of improving and broadening CS education.   We are studying the impact of these programs to determine how school districts and colleges can best work together to advance the teaching of CS in the high school classroom.  For more details on these activities, see the sidebar menu.      

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (#1923378).  

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 

Last updated January 2024.