Rewind! It's June 2013 and I get that joyous email I had been patiently waiting for informing me that I had been selected to serve as a Google Student Ambassador for my University, The African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, Nigeria. I get my things ready, air ticket's been paid for so I head off to the Airport to board my flight to Kenya for the Google Summit. I returned back to Nigeria after a mind-blowing Summit and my work begins. The experiences from that venture had been highlighted in an earlier post so just Click here to read about it
Fast forward, it's now April 2015, two years later and a lot has happened within this period. I put on some weight (90kg to 96.4kg which is a lot of course), had my friends change my nickname from Slim-T to Fat-T (And now I am working on being somewhere in the middle by hitting the gym more regularly and eating healthy) and I also added a new title "Former" to my previous title "Lead Google Student Ambassador, AUST, Abuja." Wow! What an accomplishment right? Wrong!
It's been an exciting two year period since my last official assignment as a Google Student Ambassador. Upon finishing my tenure as an Ambassador in 2014, I was promoted within my Office at the Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria where I was serving as an Assistant Lecturer in the Computer Science Department to now co-leading as the Deputy Head of Department (with a Lecturer II status).
Sometime in August 2014, I happened to be returning back to Nigeria from Cameroon through Ethiopia with Ethiopian Airlines (a journey of about 4hrs 30mins from Ethiopia to Nigeria). I was trying calm my nerves after battling for a long time with the immigration authorities at the Douala International Airport in Cameroon. My mind was not ready to think about any other thing except how to get back at the folks who tried ripping me off in my own country. But as I lay back in my seat trying to get some rest in my mind all of a sudden an avalanche of ideas came gushing in from every direction. I took out my notebook and began writing them down. I began to see with absolute clarity something I had pondered on for a long time and later abandoned-How to build enthusiasm in High School teachers so that their students could get a richer experience in the classroom. Upon landing in Abuja, I went home developed these ideas and the next thing was "How do I get the funding for it?" Then the CS4HS popped into my mind.
I waited for the application period to open up and submitted my application for the Google CS4HS 2015 grant. It was with immense joy when I received the kind of email I received two years ago, this time informing me that my application was successful and that I had been awarded the Google CS4HS grant to carry out my project. The application process this year was very competitive as the email read and we happened to be one of the few Institutions that received the funding globally. Am I excited about this? Of course I am! And you can see the smile on my face.
Now it's time to go to work to ensure that through this grant local Computer Science teachers in Secondary Schools and Universities will be empowered to teach CS in a way that's fun, engaging and motivating to students. The trained teachers will then be assisted in organizing a Train-The-Students (TTS) event on their various campuses. This will encourage the students to pursue future careers in CS and STEM related fields as well as motivate them to become life-long learners. This is how I became the first individual to transition from being a former Google Student Ambassador to now a Google CS4HS 2015 Award Winner!
Arreytambe Tabot is currently a final year Ph.D. Candidate (Computer Science) at the African University of Science and Technology (Abuja, Nigeria), and the Deputy Head of the Computer Science Department at the Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria. He also heads the overall operations of OpenKollabo Group as its Founder and CEO. You can follow us here on LinkedIn by visiting our Company Page.
He has held senior level management positions at various start-ups and
Non-Profit Organizations in the past. He is a geek gone commercial, a
public speaker and writer par excellence.
