Andrea Lombard scrapped her way into UC Berkeley, transferring after two years in community college. With a childhood spent hustling with her parents in their family business, traveling the world selling products at fairs and tradeshows, the daughter of entrepreneurs was ready for the pressures and rigors of the country’s top-ranked public university. But Lombard, confident and quick on her feet, was blindsided by a problem that many transfer students face: social isolation.
After a lonely first year, Lombard did what she has always done: find a problem to solve. She noticed that as a media major with an interest in technology, she often felt like an outsider in maker spaces and computer labs. After a summer spent surveying students of all majors about their interest in tech, she noticed that her experience was part of a bigger trend on campus. Her solution was to create the first tech club for women of all majors on campus, called FEMTech.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!