CSEdWeek Spotlight Series: Etienne Cuero, Code@TACC Alumni

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    In 2023, the Education & Outreach (E&O) team at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) completed its eighth year of hosting Code@TACC, the center’s signature summer residential program for high school students. Since its inception in 2015, Code@TACC has served more than 600 students from diverse backgrounds with the majority identifying as African American/Black and Hispanic/Latinx. Hundreds of these campers have gone on to pursue postsecondary education in STEM fields.

    Etienne Cuero graduated from Texas State University in May with a Computer Science degree.

    We caught up with the camp alumnus to hear about his experience at Code@TACC, the program’s impact, and to learn about his career aspirations.

    Etienne Cuero graduated from Texas State University in May with a Computer Science degree. Credit: Photo by Jorge Salazar, TACC

    E&O/TACC: What inspired you to attend a Code@TACC camp?

    Etienne Cuero: My mom and sister encouraged me to attend. I’m glad they did because my time at camp was amazing. I’ve been interested in technology since I was in high school. I’m detail-oriented and enjoy technical activities like testing out code.

    E&O/TACC: What are some of your favorite camp memories/experiences?

    Etienne Cuero: At the 2017 Robotics camp, we programmed a miniature self-driving car to steer itself around obstacles and environmental hazards within a set distance to prevent it from crashing. At the 2018 Cybersecurity camp, we used Raspberry Pi computers to analyze files (checking if files contained false information) and create small programs like a basic Hello, World.

    E&O/TACC: What are your future career plans?

    Etienne Cuero: I want to become a software engineer and work in web development or machine learning. I’ve been practicing and going through tutorials to sharpen my skills. I also created an online portfolio describing the projects I’ve worked on at Texas State. One project I created was a multi-thread C program that played a card game. Multi-threading allows other processes to run simultaneously, and C has a pthread library that I used to lock processes before releasing them. As for the game itself, players 1 and 3 played against players 2 and 4 — the goal was to match their partner’s card. If they matched, that team won the game. If not, the player would discard either the new card or the old one.

    Etienne Cuero (second from left) works with his team on the Secure ATX final presentation at Code@TACC. Credit: Photo courtesy of Cisco

    E&O/TACC: Why should students attend Code@TACC camps?

    Etienne Cuero: These camps expose students to experiences that few organizations or schools can provide. The lessons learned at each camp will help students as they pursue higher education. I worked as a counselor in 2022 for Connected camp. I thought I was teaching campers, however, I was learning alongside them. We taught campers how to use a UNIX operating system, and I applied those skills to my UNIX system course at Texas State. UNIX is an operating system developed in the 1960s that acts as a suite of programs to make the computer work.

    E&O/TACC: Thank you for your time and contributions to STEM, Mr. Cuero.