Biology, math, art profs to host free Python coding workshops on Discord

The workshops, held over 10 weeks, will be led by Drs. Nate Sutter and Jon Vanderwerff, La Sierra University professors of biology and mathematics respectively, with pixel art taught by Terrill Thomas, chair of the Art+Design department. Undergraduates will also assist with game development. Participants will meet online Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4 – 5 p.m. PST through March 24 for live instruction in game creation. Workshops will take place in La Sierra’s LEAF server hosted on Discord, a popular voice-over-IP internet platform used by groups to play online games on private servers, hold group chats and talk.

Participation in the Python workshops is open to high school and academy students in grades 9 – 12 as well as their teachers. No prior experience in Python or other computer coding is necessary. Admission is free.

“Experiences like this also help inform student decisions when it comes to choosing a future career." -- Robert Shultz, math and science teacher, San Diego Academy

Noted Vanderwerff, “In the workshops, we’ll explore the logic of the game world but we’ll also spend some time drawing and customizing pixel art for our two-dimensional games. Watching your code move around the screen is awesome.”

Robert Shultz, a high school math and science teacher at San Diego Academy consulted with Vanderwerff and fellow workshop organizer, La Sierra biology professor Nate Sutter in developing the coding series and gauging the interest of students. Sutter is a former student of Shultz’s.

“I went to my classes and polled my students. I was stunned at the response,” Shultz said. “The majority of my students expressed an enthusiastic interest in participating in a Python course. They seem to intuitively understand that computer coding impacts their daily lives, and they want to be a part of it.” While not all students may be able to fit the workshops into their schedules, he expects San Diego Academy to be represented in workshop attendance, Shultz said.

“Many of our students are lifelong learners who are craving experiences outside of the standard high school curriculum. Opportunities like this help keep them motivated, and often result in them doing better in all of their classes,” Shultz noted. “Experiences like this also help inform student decisions when it comes to choosing a future career.

Python is one of the most popular computer programming languages and can be used for a variety of purposes including game creation, website and software building and other activities. It is a favorite among amateurs and professionals alike for its speed, readability, ease of use, and efficiency. Python is used by scientists, engineers, and data scientists for work in research, business, and finance. This January, Python was ranked by the Tiobe programming language index as the Programming Language of the Year 2021 ahead of the leading Java and C languages.

La Sierra University is offering the Python workshop series as an outreach endeavor in conjunction with La Sierra LEAF, a community for 9th – 12th grade students doing projects in STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. “LEAF stands for Learning, Exploring, and Fun,” says Sutter who will serve as the instructor for the Python course. “Learning is very engaging when it’s project-based. We’ve had great success with project-based learning in our college lab courses and we’re excited to apply this approach with high school-aged students too.”

Registration and Discord setup instructions for the Python coding workshops are available at lasierra.edu/python