SBU selected for Google grant

Southwest Baptist University has been approved for the second year in a row to receive a grant from Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc.

The $10,000 grant, part of Google's Computer Science for High School program, provides funding for a two-day computational thinking workshop, according to a news release.

The teacher's workshop scheduled July 12-13 at SBU will promote the technology-based thinking, as well as focus on computer science. Area middle or high school teachers are invited to the workshop, according to SBU.

Last year, about 140 universities worldwide were selected by Google for the grant series, including SBU, the release said.

“If we reach the teachers, then we have this wider-reaching effect,” said Helene Martin, a high school computer science and CS4HS teacher for Carnegie Mellon University, in the release. “As teachers, we ultimately have a lot of impact on what our students do.

"If we can get this group of people excited about computer science themselves, we figure that they can go on and do a little more research, bring in guest speakers, integrate it into their own curriculum and that's how we get the next generation of computer scientists.”