Dear Duke Engage donor,
Thank you for enabling such incredible opportunities to Duke students. Pandemic or no pandemic, Duke Engage is a great program that truly sets our university apart.
This year, I had planned to go to Jordan through Duke Engage. I had been looking forward to this for months, so I was disheartened when coronavirus meant we could not travel internationally. In fact, being from London where the virus was particularly rampant, I could barely leave the house! Without Duke Engage’s move online, I would have had a very monotonous summer.
Thanks to your generosity, I was able to spend my time in quarantine productively. Inspired by my lack of access to computer science classes before Duke, I created an online computer science class so that people could learn to code, no matter the background they came from or wherever they were based. The opportunity to use my Duke Education to benefit others is one I will never forget.
Whether it was getting used to recording myself teaching, planning lessons or writing a curriculum, every aspect of this project was a learning experience. I only started coding at Duke, and I certainly did not expect to be on the teaching side so soon. Now, having looked at coding from both the student and teacher perspectives, I feel that I have developed a truly three-dimensional view of coding. I am confident that this will be useful in my future studies and beyond.
Thank you again for this opportunity and for enabling me to make the most of an unusual summer.
Annabel Howell