SAN ANTONIO — UTSA is offering people with disabilities the opportunity to learn valuable job skills through its ExploreSTEM camp next month.
“I just want to make one of those robots that, you know, is able to work for (you) and kind of, like, hand out stuff and give it to you, but you still get up and do stuff too, but it also helps around the house,” said Kameron Shanafelt.
After participating in an ExploreSTEM computer coding camp last year through the University of Texas-San Antonio, Shanafelt started to see his possibilities coming into view.
“I participated by making collision detection about a car,” he said.
Shanafelt, who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and autism, found the camp through the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Program, an initiative of the the Texas Workforce Commission. It connects people with disabilities to job opportunities and training.
“Teachers and students, we learned a lot from the whole process,” said Wei Wang, assistant professor of computer science at UTSA.
Wang is one of the developers at the ExploreSTEM coding camp. He says that programming autonomous vehicles is a good avenue for teaching the basic concepts of computer coding.
“It actually is a good combination of the practical part and the theoretical part,” Wang said.
Last year was the first coding camp UTSA held. Wang says that once they adjusted to the students' learning style, most of them picked things up fairly well.
“This is actually from a teacher’s perspective; any time the student learns, we’re happy,” Wang said. “And honestly, for a majority of the students in the camp, I don’t think they had any difficulties in learning this stuff.”
The coding camp has welcomed students with developmental disabilities and severe visual impairment. Wang says computer science as a career field is well suited to people with disabilities because they can adapt it to their lifestyles.
“There’s no requirement for location, we were starting to do remote work even before the pandemic,” he said. “And it has very limited requirement for you to interact with people if you do not like it. And, personally, that’s one of the reasons I like computer science too; I don’t have to talk to people too much.”
There are still spots available for the next sessions of the ExploreSTEM camp, set to take place in the next two weeks. Wang seems to have made an impression on Shanafelt, who plans on attending again this year.
“He has a great sense of humor and he’s really funny,” Shanafelt said. “He’s one of those teachers where if you weren’t finished with the programming part yet, the step he was on, he’d wait for you until you’re ready.”
The camp is open to Texas high school students with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 22 currently working with a Texas Workforce Commission counselor. You can learn more about the initiative here.