Though classes were not in session, the Levine Science Research Center was bustling this summer. Professors from around the country, area teachers, and local middle school students filled the corridors for national conferences, educational workshops, and summer camps. Here is just a sampling of this year's CS summer events:

Alice: Teaching the Teachers

C-SURF Fellow Liz Liang

The CS Department hosted two Adventures in Alice Programming events at Duke during the hot months of June and July. First, Susan Rodger and colleagues welcomed 40 new teachers to a one-week workshop to learn to integrate the Alice programming language into their curriculums. The team also offered two-day follow-up workshops for teachers who had attended in past years. This year, returning teachers asked for whole projects that utilized Alice, so Rodger and her Duke student assistants demonstrated how to do a book report, build an adventure game and more. "We created tutorials so teachers can learn how to build those projects and put lessons together," says Rodger.

ARTSI: A Faculty Favorite

Prof. Carlo Tomasi

This summer, Duke hosted the third annual national faculty workshop for the Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact Alliance, or ARTSI. For two days in June, professors from historically black colleges, such as Howard University and Florida A&M, met with colleagues at Research I schools, including Duke, Carnegie Mellon, and more, to evaluate and share ideas about how to use robotics to encourage undergraduates' interest in computing. Over 25 faculty enjoyed presentations from Professors Carlo Tomasi, Vince Conitzer, Rachael Brady, and Ron Parr on robotics topics that can be used in the classroom.

HarambeeNet: Building Bridges

Prof. Jeff Forbes (left) interacts with HarambeeNet participants

On July 8th and 9th, faculty and graduate students from across the country joined Professor Jeff Forbes and other Duke CS faculty for the HarambeeNet workshop to discuss ways to introduce computing through the modeling and analysis of social networks. Workshop participants explored ideas like how to build an introductory CS course centered on social networks -- a major endeavor here in the Duke CS Department -- how to visualize networks for educational purposes, and how to gather networking data for use in a course. "It was a great group of people," says Forbes. "The idea of the project, and the workshop, is to build a national community."