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 Adelphi University 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 .
āHigh school students are looking for courses where they can learn computer science,ā said Dr. Stemkoski, an associate professor of and in the .
Evan Leider took the Introduction to Game Programming course and is now enrolled at Adelphi.
āThe 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, āWow, look at what I did in two weeks!ā Then I tell them, āIf I could teach you that much in two weeks, imagine what I could teach you in four years.āā
Evan Leider got the message. He took Dr. Stemkoskiās course in Summer 2013. Today, heās an Adelphi freshman majoring in computer science.
āThe Pre-College course was definitely my motivation to come to Adelphi,ā said Leider, a Long Beach, New York, resident whose father, Donald Leider ā72, M.B.A. ā76, uncle Roger Leider ā82, M.B.A. ā85, and sister Alana Leider, M.A. ā13, are all Adelphi graduates.
āEven though I have all these Adelphi graduates in my family, I didnāt know what college I wanted to go to,ā Evan Leider said. āProfessor Stemkoskiās class made that decision easy. Heās the best teacher Iāve ever had in any subject. Heās very enthusiastic and knowledgeable.ā
Leider, a video game devotee before taking the course, learned codingātelling the computer what to doāand Constructāa computer programming languageāfrom Dr. Stemkoski. And the professorās assistant, , taught him 3D modeling, a computer application.
āThe most exciting thing I do is make video games,ā said Leider, who said he has created 10 āsmallā games since taking Dr. Stemkoskiās course. āOne of the guys in my class in the Pre-College, Matthew Mallory, goes to Adelphi now too.ā
Dr. Stemkoski offered his Introduction to Game Programming course to Adelphi students for the first time in Spring 2015.
For further information, please contact:
Todd Wilson
Strategic Communications DirectorĢż
p ā 516.237.8634
e ā twilson@adelphi.edu