In the summer of 2012 (when Scott was between 11th and 12th grades), he participated in Andrew’s Leap, a computer enrichment program for high school students that is run by the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, PA. Participants must take a qualifying exam to be accepted into the class. Hundreds of kids take the exam, but only 40 were accepted in 2012, so we were so proud when Scott made it in.

The full-day program lasted seven weeks and consisted of lectures by CMU professors and graduate students, presentations on research and real-world projects ongoing at CMU in the field of computing, lab work, and field trips. He particularly enjoyed the trip to Google Pittsburgh, where he saw first-hand how pampered the programmers are. That’s definitely a place where he’d like to work!

Scott was assigned to the advanced programming track in Andrew’s Leap where he studied data structures and dynamic programming. For his final project, Scott created a virtual Etch-A-Sketch that mimics the appearance and drawing capabilities of a real-world Etch-A-Sketch. He also gave his Etch-A-Sketch the ability to render imported images as they would be drawn in the toy’s style. The audience at the presentation, which included the students’ families and CMU faculty, enthusiastically expressed surprise and delight at the program’s functionality during Scott’s demonstration.