On Monday, May 4, 150-200 students, faculty, and community members gathered on the first floor of the Farokhzad Math Center for the Computer Science (CS) Symposium, a mandatory event for all computer science students, with students in a non-level-one class required to present. CS students of all levels, including middle school representatives, presented their work from the year. According to CS teacher May Blair, the Symposium aimed to provide an opportunity for “all of our computer science students… to show off the work they’ve put in this year… that they’re really excited about.”
As described in the May 1 email sent by the Computer Science Department to parents, the Symposium was “in the style of a science fair where you wander around and experience people’s projects.”
Students enrolled in upper-level CS courses shared what they had created. Adair Johnson ’27 presented her convolutional neural network and was excited to “share with the world what [she was] presenting, since [she was] really proud of it.” Another presenter, Alexander Landis-Arnold ’26, displayed what he described as “quantum tic-tac-toe,” and hoped to “enjoy other people’s projects, especially people who are doing stuff outside of just computer science.” Charlotte Weinstein ’26, who presented both an AI image classifier and a Hamilton-line sorter, said she could learn a lot from “taking in others' projects and learning what they’ve been doing in their classes.”
The Symposium aimed to offer the CS 1 students a window into the upper-level coding curriculum. Claire Liu ’28 said, “I’m not as experienced as the other CS students, so I think from this experience, I’ll learn a little bit more about what each course is like.” On the other hand, Niam Shah ’28 cited the mandatory nature of the event as his primary reason for attending. “I’m a CS 1 student, so I have to be here.” Nevertheless, he still described the event as “a cool experience,” saying that he was excited to “see all the awesome projects that the high-level CS students made.”
However, not all attendees appreciated the event’s mandatory nature. Wesley Xue ’28 suggested that instead of requiring attendance for all CS 1 students, teachers should “pick one or a couple CS 1 students to represent the CS 1 group.” Some students also struggled with fitting the Symposium into their calendar. Julia Refai ’28 suggested that, since the event was mandatory, it should have been scheduled earlier than the chosen 6:30 p.m. so that students who take the bus could more easily attend.
Non-CS students, for whom the event was optional, attended as well: Asher Berk ’29 came to support his brother and friends who were presenting and to “learn more about computer science at Milton.” He described the event as helpful in deciding whether to take computer science at Milton in the future.
This year’s Symposium also featured a large group of middle school coders. Kim was in favor of middle school involvement, saying “[the middle schoolers] were extremely passionate about their work, had impressive products [like] games, simulations, etc., and showcased the outstanding work they are doing in the [Art and Media Center].” Blair added that the middle schoolers “brought their joy and curiosity to the event, both as presenters and spectators.”
Math and CS teacher Kevin Kim characterized the planning process as “not that intricate,” simply involving sending an email in early April to presenters. Blair emphasized that the event was student-driven: “it’s really up to the students to decide what they bring.” CS Department Chair Chris Hales described the process as “a little bit of herding cats, since students don’t always show up on time, students don’t always fill out the forms on time.”
Before the Symposium, Kim hoped students would “be wowed and impressed by other people, and [gain] a new interest for computer science, especially if they haven’t taken computer science before.” Similarly, Blair wanted visitors to gain “a sense of inspiration [in] their fellow students, seeing the hard work and talent that everyone puts in.” Overall, teachers hoped that students would connect with their teachers and peers over the projects; as CS teacher Emma Bradford stated, “this is a community time for us to be together and share some of the cool stuff our students have done that may or may not be easily visible.”
CS teachers have already identified goals for future CS symposia. Blair plans to “advertise the CS Symposium sooner so that even more people come to check out the awesome student work.” Kim hopes to “make a teaser video of some of the students' projects to hype up the event for the school.” At the end of the day, he summarized the event as a success, saying that “the FMC was bustling, every student presenter was speaking, and friends and family were asking questions and exclaiming with awe at what they saw.”