Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­

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Lee Stemkoski, Ph.D., has helped students have fun while they learn to create video games.

by Cecil Harris

For the past two summers, , has helped high school students have fun at Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­ while learning to create video games. He teaches an intensive course, , as part of , in which high school students reside on the campus for two weeks, learn new skills and earn college credits.

Other for-credit Pre-College courses are , , , and .

“High school students are looking for courses where they can learn computer science,†said Dr. Stemkoski, an associate professor of and in the .

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Evan Leider took the Introduction to Game Programming course and is now enrolled at Adelphi.

“The Pre-College course in video game programming has been successful because the students have fun and grasp the concepts very quickly. I could show a student how to make a video game like Asteroids (a player steers a spaceship and blows up asteroids) in two hours. At the end of the course, the students say, ‘Wow, look at what I did in two weeks!’ Then I tell them, ‘If I could teach you that much in two weeks, imagine what I could teach you in four years.’â€

Evan Leider got the message. He took Dr. Stemkoski’s course in Summer 2013. Today, he’s an Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­freshman majoring in computer science.

“The Pre-College course was definitely my motivation to come to Adelphi,†said Leider, a Long Beach, New York, resident whose father, Donald Leider ’72, M.B.A. ’76, uncle Roger Leider ’82, M.B.A. ’85, and sister Alana Leider, M.A. ’13, are all Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­graduates.

“Even though I have all these Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­graduates in my family, I didn’t know what college I wanted to go to,†Evan Leider said. “Professor Stemkoski’s class made that decision easy. He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had in any subject. He’s very enthusiastic and knowledgeable.â€

Leider, a video game devotee before taking the course, learned coding—telling the computer what to do—and Construct—a computer programming language—from Dr. Stemkoski. And the professor’s assistant, , taught him 3D modeling, a computer application.

“The most exciting thing I do is make video games,†said Leider, who said he has created 10 “small†games since taking Dr. Stemkoski’s course. “One of the guys in my class in the Pre-College, Matthew Mallory, goes to Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­now too.â€

Dr. Stemkoski offered his Introduction to Game Programming course to Âé¶¹´«Ã½Ó³»­students for the first time in Spring 2015.


For further information, please contact:

Todd Wilson
Strategic Communications DirectorÌý
p – 516.237.8634
e – twilson@adelphi.edu

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