Come fall, Sky Adams will lead the award-winning Computer Science Academy at Santa Barbara High School. She replaces Richard Johnston as director, who chose her as his co-director last year ahead of the transition. The comprehensive education program saw four young women win the Congressional App Challenge in 2019, and students and teachers have won National Center for Women and Information Technology awards every year.
Adams has taught computing at Santa Barbara High since 2016 and added S.B. Junior High to her calendar in 2019. “I just love the kids. I think they are awesome,” Adams said. “It’s really cool to teach [computer science] at a junior high. There really isn’t much opportunity for them to learn it at that age.”
Adams’s passion for computer science began at an early age thanks to her older brother. He taught her how to write “something simple, like one of those programs where you ask it something and it answers you,” she said. She earned her master’s in education from UCSB in 2016 and a bachelor’s in computer science from Brown University in 2014.