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Ansley Watson

2,785

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Finalist

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Winner

Bio

Hello and thank you so much for checking out my profile! I am Ansley Watson, a sophomore at the University of North Georgia. My goal in life is to create more opportunities for females in the computer science field. During high school, I wanted to create a community with the female students on the Computer Science Career track. Thankfully, with a help of teacher I created a chapter of Girls Who Code(GWC) at my school. Additionally, the club and I would go to elementary schools to introduce coding to young minds! We would also go to middle schools as well to introduce the club and get students excited about joining the Computer Science track. I was also apart of National Honors Society(NHS), National Technical Honors Society(NTHS), Beta Club, Book Club, Future Teachers of Alabama(FTA), and Skills USA. I served in different officer positions in these clubs. I started playing softball at four years old, and it has been a passion of mine ever since. At age ten I began to play travel softball with the goal of playing in college. I am proud to say I have achieved this goal! Now I coach softball with the goal of helping young female athletes achieve their goals.

Education

University of North Georgia

Bachelor's degree program
2023 - 2027
  • Majors:
    • Computer Science

Central High School

High School
2019 - 2023

Miscellaneous

  • Desired degree level:

    Bachelor's degree program

  • Graduate schools of interest:

  • Transfer schools of interest:

  • Majors of interest:

    • Computer Science
  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Career

    • Dream career field:

      Computer Software

    • Dream career goals:

    • Coach

      The Facility/Self-employed
      2022 – Present2 years

    Sports

    Softball

    Club
    2016 – Present8 years

    Arts

    • Red Devil Television(High School)

      Videography
      2019 – 2023

    Public services

    • Volunteering

      Wreaths Across America — Placed and passed out wreaths.
      2019 – Present

    Future Interests

    Advocacy

    Volunteering

    McDuffie Software Engineering Scholarship
    Winner
    Growing up, the question that I was most often asked was, “How do you understand that?”. It was my peers who were asking this question about my coding class, which I was one of the few girls in. To be completely honest, the question gave me confidence in my abilities but also made me feel lonely. This feeling was due to the lack of a female community in my coding class. I didn’t have anyone to share my joy from figuring out an error in a code. I felt isolated, from the overwhelming amount of male students in my class that stuck to themselves the majority of the time. Toward the end of my junior year, I won an award for my affiliate at the National Center for Women and Information Technology(NCWIT). As all the awards were being handed out, I noticed that the majority of the awardees were in Girls Who Code. After that, my teacher and I set up a plan to launch a Girls Who Code Club for my high school. The club was officially launched in August of the new school year, and we had about fifteen girls join, from different graduating classes. It felt so gratifying to have a club full of other females with the same passion I have for coding. We loved our monthly meetings where we would create new programs to show our creativity, as well as fix errors within a code. As a group, we quickly realized that we continued to code in high school because it was instilled in us in our elementary schools. So we decided to visit elementary and middle schools within our school district to introduce computer programming to young minds. Additionally, we wanted to ingrain taking computer science classes and joining the Girls Who Code in high school for young girls. Teaching younger minds was very gratifying, and instilled faith in me that females going through the Computer Science program in my high school would have a community to be a part of. Just like coding was introduced to students by my friends and I, it was introduced to me by my Dad. My Dad is a software engineer and my number one inspiration, which is why I have decided to follow in his footsteps. He is our sole-income producer for our household, still manages to take care of the house, and takes an interest in my sisters and I. Most importantly, he instilled his passion for programming in me at the age of seven. He got me started with block-based coding and even bought me books to learn different algorithms that I could use in my code. It was, and still is, a way for me to express my creativity. Expressing my creativity through code is one of my favorite things to do to this day. This is why I have decided to pursue a degree in Computer Science. I plan to focus on mobile app development because it reminds me of the eight-year-old who loved to make games out of block-based code. I love to express my creativity and develop ideas that can make life less stress-free, and more fun. With the help of this scholarship, I will be a role model for young computer scientists, just as my Dad was for me.