Recapping Our AI Summer Program for High School Students
Interested to know more about AI summer programs for high school students? Take a look at this recap of the first edition at St. Agnes Academy.
One of the biggest challenges for today’s parents is keeping their teenagers engaged during the summer months. A great idea to consider is AI summer programs for high school students.
In June, St. Agnes Academy hosted an exciting AI summer program designed especially for future and current high school students interested in exploring the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
With a focus on hands-on learning and real-world applications, our program aimed to equip students with the foundational skills needed to thrive in the rapidly advancing field of AI. The program was a resounding success, and we are thrilled to share the highlights and outcomes with you.
What Went Into the AI Summer Program?
Our AI summer program was a great initiative that brought together students from grades 7-12 to learn about AI. The program was open to middle and high school students from across Houston. More than 30 local students participated in the program, creating a dynamic and collaborative learning environment.
Over the course of two weeks in June, students engaged in a variety of activities, including coding exercises, project-based learning, and interactive discussions led by experts from top universities like Stanford and MIT.
Hear From Our Students: Key Takeaways from the Program
Students who enrolled in the program had an overwhelmingly positive experience. The students we talked to raved about the opportunity to develop AI proficiency and socially-impactful projects.
Here are some pieces of feedback from students about their experience in the co-ed summer intensive:
- “I enjoyed my experience in this program. I believed it to be very informative and beneficial to my plans in the future regarding adapting to AI and its involvement in all fields.”
- “The program helped me gain a deeper understanding about AI and coding in only two weeks. I now know the fundamentals, which people usually take a whole semester to learn.”
- “I enjoyed the AI Scholars program. It was fun and challenging but it was all at a pace at which I could learn and understand without being overwhelmed.”
- “I learned a lot about coding in Python and how accessible coding can be. The experience is rewarding to meet new people and teachers and being able to work with them and learn together.”
- “Although I entered the course skeptical and concerned towards AI, I learned about beneficial and unexpected applications of AI.”
Amazing Guidance: First-Class AI Instructors
To ensure a positive learning experience, we partnered with Inspirit AI to source a team of MIT, Stanford, and Ivy League alumni and graduate students. These instructors traveled to Houston to lead the AI intensive, deliver high-quality content, and provide mentorship to our students:
- Mekhi Jones is the Technical Co-Founder at Expanse, a startup building the productivity interface for working with Large Language Models (LLMs). Previously, Mekhi received a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Stanford University and has worked as a software engineer.
- Aleena Shabbir is currently a PhD student at UC Berkeley in Operations Research. She previously received a Bachelor's from MIT, where she studied math and computer science.
- Michele Joseph studied computer science and business at Cornell University. Last summer, she worked at Cruise, an autonomous driving startup, where she worked on sensor fusion.
Inspirit’s team of MIT, Stanford, and Ivy League alumni and graduate students worked with groups of middle and high school students to build an AI toolkit to craft solutions for an increasingly complex world.
For example, students developed fundamentals like Python coding and AI machine learning algorithms and applied their coding facility to live coding labs, using cutting-edge research to solve real-world problems.
The AI capstone projects included unified conceptual understanding, programming experience and skill development, and social good – all delivered in an engaging and high-energy format. Students presented their work on discovering exoplanets in a final presentation to the community.
Key Takeaways for Students: Courses and Learning Outcomes
The AI summer program covered a range of topics, providing students with a comprehensive understanding of AI technologies and applications.
In the first half of the course, students learned about core AI technologies, including:
- Applications and foundational concepts of AI
- How to support AI research
- Programming tools such as Python coding
- Machine learning algorithms
- Linear and logistic regression
- Natural language processing
- Computer vision
In the second half of the course, students applied their newly acquired skills to instructor-led group projects. Some of the standout real-world projects included:
- Distracted Driver Detection: Using computer vision to improve road safety by detecting distracted drivers.
- Pneumonia Detection: Developing algorithms to detect pneumonia from medical images.
- Exoplanet Discovery: Creating models to identify exoplanets.
- Music Recommendation Systems: Engineering systems to recommend music based on user preferences.
Students found these projects to be both hands-on and ethically oriented, allowing them to apply their knowledge to real-world problems while working closely with experts from prestigious universities.
What’s Next: Our Future AI Summer Programs for High School Students
Given the success of this year's AI summer program, we are excited to announce that Inspirit’s team will return to St. Agnes in Summer 2025:
- Dates: Weekdays from June 9-20, 2025 (except June 19th).
- Time: 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
We encourage parents to consider this opportunity to provide their rising high school child or current high school student with this enriching experience. It’s a great way to spend two weeks in the summer preparing for future academic and career success.
The program will remain open to high school students and middle school students at St. Agnes and the Houston area. Look out for more information on how to enroll in early 2025.
Keep Your Kids Engaged With Summer AI Programs
As you can see, the first edition of our AI summer program provided students with an invaluable opportunity to develop AI proficiency and work on socially impactful projects. The positive feedback from our students highlights the program's success and its potential to inspire the next generation of innovators.
If you're interested in learning more about AI summer programs for high school students or enrolling your child in next year's session, please contact our office. Together, let's empower our students to harness the power of AI and make a difference in the world.
