Programming AND Algorithms (PANDA) Officer

General Overview

The Programming and Algorithms Club (PANDA Club) is a special interest group of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, with the focus of applying algorithmic problem-solving skills. PANDA Club holds weekly meeting, reinforcing these algorithmic problem-solving skills regularly through tackling algorithm problems akin to those you would encounter at a technical interview.

The Experience

As an officer (Big Panda), I am responsible for leading, facilitating, and teaching groups of students of varying levels. Typically the levels of our ICS Classes at UH Manoa (ICS 111, 211, 212, 311) are the levels of focus, differing on how deep we delve into the algorithms and problem-solving process. I am primarily responsible for mentoring those of the ICS 212 group, but still mentor those in any other group depending on their needs. Mentoring groups requires me to speak to multiple people at once, write and display thoughts on a whiteboard for everyone, and keeping everyone on the same page with everyone’s input on a problem.

Takeaways

Being a mentor or teacher has key takeaways, but I think the most important thing I got from being a mentor for the PANDA Club is that I really do enjoy problem solving and coding, and being able to make that a bit more engaging for other people and pique their interest as well is something I really look forward to each week we have a meeting. Not only do these weekly meetings reinforce both my students’ and my algorithmic skills, problem solving skills, or data structure skills, but also put a heavy emphasis on one’s ability to get their idea across. Overall, being a PANDA Club mentor not only provides me with valuable experiences as a teacher in general, but also as a student.

This is the associated PANDA website.