Spelman's Thulani Vereen is a senior computer science major and professionally trained dancer, fascinated with creation. She has completed a vast amount of computer science coursework and has had two internships in the tech/engineering sector of NBCUniversal.
Her passion for creation and leadership runs strong during the school year when she co-captains the Spelman Programming Team, dances with the Spelman Dance Theater. Vereen’s research focuses on the intersection of computer science and dance. She aspires to invent technologies that revolutionize the performing arts. Whether it is in classical ballet or computer science, Thulani is passionate about exposing black and brown children, especially girls, to fields they have historically been excluded from.
Last year, Vereen and three Morehouse students teamed up to create a CodeHouse event
that will host approximately 200 Atlanta Public School middle schoolers and high schoolers aiming to expose students to the fundamentals of computer science and to some of the most innovative technology companies in the world. Vereen believes anyone's life can change with a good idea, hard work, and technical expertise to build something from nothing.
"The technology industry lacks the presence of black engineers and a major reason for this is that there are not many people of color majoring in computer science in college in the first place." She explains. "We figured this might be due to a lack of exposure so we made CodeHouse to, at the very least, give these kids the opportunity to find out what computer science actually is from college students who look like them and black engineers from lead tech companies. We leveraged our industry contacts to directly connect students of Atlanta Public Schools with the world’s leading tech companies...to literally show them that it is not a world too far away and that they have a place in it."
This year's CodeHouse event will be presented in partnership with Spelman's Programming Team. The "Atlanta University Center Coding Competition and Brunch Celebration" aims to bring the competitive atmosphere of the competitions to our community to challenge AUC peers with fun coding challenges. For the 2nd bi-annual competition, CodeHouse has decided to add a brunch component to the program to bring the AUC computer science majors together to celebrate being black in tech and the importance of representation in programming competitions.
The event will take place Saturday, Nov. 23.