Frederick’s Hood College is adding Google courses to its curriculum

Frederick, Md.’s Hood College is teaming with Google to start offering courses developed by the tech giant that are designed to teach computer science and data science to students who may not have previously considered entering tech.

Known as the Applied Computing Series, the courses combine instruction on coding and data analysis with problem-solving that’s pulled from real-world cases. The two courses include:

• Foundations of Python Programming — Taught remotely by a computer science professor, and involves group work led by an instructor at the college
• How to Think Like a Data Scientist — Includes an overview on using data to make decisions, and work with datasets

The liberal arts college with about 2,500 students — 37% of whom are people of color or international — is one of 20 institutions working with Google to offer the courses. George Dimitoglou, a computer science professor who led the effort with fellow faculty members Aijuan Dong and Jiang Li, explained it this way in a statement:

“With this partnership, Google is providing us course content and free access to their platform. That enables us to bring in the classroom computational thinking and coding skills that help students from any major to learn and grow academically while obtaining practical skills. The two new courses build up to a sequence that will further support our department’s efforts to strengthen our offerings in data science, data mining and machine learning.”

Along with the coursework, the program also lets students connect with employees at the company to learn more about what a tech career is like.

We’re taking note of tech companies getting involved in educational efforts, and Google is among the biggest players we’ve seen. Last year, a group of Morgan State students took part in the California company’s tech exchange program.