The DigiGirlz of Moses Lake
Charles H. Featherstone/Colombia Basin Herald Brooke Sanchez, an eighth-grader at Frontier Middle School, programs some simple sensors at CB Tech on Tuesday.
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald Lisa Karstetter of Microsoft talks about possibilities in computer science to a group of Moses Lake middle schoolers on Tuesday at CB Tech.
MOSES LAKE — “How many computing jobs are open in the state of Washington right now?”
Lisa Karstetter is asking a simple enough question of a group of middle school girls gathered at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center on Tuesday.
“1,000,” one girl says.
“2,000,” another girl answers.
Karstetter, a manager with Microsoft in Quincy, shakes her head.
No, she said, there are over 15,000 open computing jobs in Washington. With an average starting salary of $107,000 per year.
“That’s amazing. They can’t fill all those,” Karstetter said. “C’mon girls, there’s some good money to made in the tech fields.”
Around 100 sixth, seventh and eighth-grade girls from all three of Moses Lake’s middle school gathered from 9 a.m. to noon at CB Tech to see what it takes to be DigiGirlz, a Microsoft-sponsored program that encourages young woman to study math and science and pursue careers in technology.
They gathered to learn a little basic coding, to listen to women who work in technology, and to get some encouragement in whatever dreams or aspirations they might have.
Moses Lake native Amanda Anthony, a software test engineer with the Grant County Public Utility District who began her career at Microsoft, said she “fell into computer science” while a single mom in her late 20s studying accounting at Big Bend Community College.
“Now I get paid to methodically and systematically break software and hardware,” Anthony said. “To find fault in the code, to see where it fails.”
Karstetter says this is the first of a number of events for students — girls and boys — that Microsoft is going to organize in Central and Eastern Washington. And it’s all part of the company’s TechSpark initiative aimed at “fostering greater economic opportunity and job creation” in rural communities, according to one of Microsoft’s blogs.
In a classroom full of computers, software engineer Kal Vishwanathan, a 19-year veteran of Microsoft whose work includes Xbox programming and holographic glasses, showed the girls how to program a basic set of sensors.
“A lot of smart devices these days have sensors,” Vishwanathan said as the girls made the devices light up when they tilted them or snapped their fingers.
“It was really cool,” said Brooke Sanchez, an eighth-grader at Frontier Middle School, of the coding exercise. “I want to work for Microsoft when I get older as a graphic designer.”
“It’s awesome, and the girls are so excited,” said Krystal Trammell, a counselor at Chief Moses Middle School. “They are asking such good questions. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.