So you have an idea. Whether it’s something you want to do just for fun or you want to change the world, how do you make it happen?
At sunhacks, a student organization in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, students can find a collaborative community to help them build the skills they need to turn their ideas into reality.
The group hosts a yearly hackathon — Arizona’s largest, drawing hundreds of participants from the region — that invites students from all backgrounds to work on a project for 24 hours. As “hackers,” student participants are encouraged to think creatively to find solutions to a challenge of their choosing.
“Our duty is to provide our hackers with the resources and opportunities to develop whatever they envision,” says Trenton Ward, a co-lead director at sunhacks and a robotics and autonomous systems graduate student in the Fulton Schools. “By bringing hackers together with mentors, sponsors, community connections and each other, we support a network of motivated people to be able to pursue their goals and ideas to the highest extent.”
A collaborative community experience
While students also participate in individual and group projects in their classes, hackathons provide a different kind of learning experience for students. As an “innovation incubator,” hackathons encourage students to experiment with bold, new ideas and create solutions with real-world impact. The lessons they learn and new skills they acquire are useful throughout their academic and professional careers.
“The limited timeframe pushes teams to quickly transform ideas into working prototypes, fostering collaborative, hands-on learning that often goes beyond typical classroom experiences,” says Omkaar Shenoy, director of hacker experience at sunhacks and a computer science senior. “By providing a collaborative space where people from various disciplines and backgrounds come together, we hope new ideas emerge that wouldn’t happen in isolation.”
During the fall 2024 event, held Sept. 28 and 29, more than 600 hackers gathered at the Sun Devil Fitness Complex on ASU’s Tempe campus to work on their sunhacks projects. In addition to computer science and engineering majors, the participants included students studying mathematics, art, pre-law, psychology, business administration and political science. About 30 students even traveled from Tucson, Arizona, and other states, including Texas and California to participate.
Hackers can work individually, with a group of friends or make a team of new connections. Alongside their peers, the participants are supported by student and industry professional mentors to help troubleshoot problems, refine ideas and collaborate on technical challenges.
Throughout the event, representatives from sponsors Amazon, State Farm, Garmin and General Dynamics were available at tables for questions and providing real-world insights to help teams improve their projects. Industry professionals from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft hosted workshops about the technologies hackers could use in their work. Mentors and judges represented companies including Meta, American Express and Nike.
Read the full story by Monique Clement on Full Circle.