Club leader Coen Adler shares his story and experiences as a part of ACM.

UCSC’s Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) hosts a variety of events from technical workshops to Hackathons. In all of these events, my role is to assist the club officers and ensure that the events are planned out and run smoothly. My favorite part of each meeting is talking with members before and after the events. I enjoy meeting new people and learning about everyone’s interests. The club strives to assist Computer Science and Engineering students in preparing for academia and industry work. We also believe that creating a fun, safe community through social events like movie nights or hiking sessions can bring out the best in students. Our goal is to foster an inclusive and supportive environment for students interested in computer-related majors with a focus on skill development beyond the classroom. We believe that through hands-on, real-world experience, students can fuel their passion in both academia and industry.

In my freshman year, I joined a lot of clubs to see which ones I enjoyed. As the year continued, I stayed with ACM, Google Developer Student Club (GDSC), and Santa Cruz Artificial Intelligence (SCAI). I interviewed for leadership positions at the end of the year, and was accepted as an instruction coordinator at all three. As an instruction coordinator, my role was to plan events and lead technical workshops. Halfway through my sophomore year, the ACM president position opened up and I stepped into the role. I’ve had a great time with all of the club officers and encourage everyone interested to apply and join club leadership.

As president, my leadership and organization skills have grown. One of my goals for the club was to expand into several sectors of computer science and engineering. During my presidency, we founded a Hackathon, Research Lab, and a Software Development team. This meant increasing the number of groups and events to keep track of. While I wanted to work closely with each branch and assist everyone individually, I quickly learned that I didn’t have the bandwidth to manage each team myself. The biggest takeaway from being a leader was the importance of proper delegation. Now, we have a lead responsible for each team and I help oversee that each division is functioning as expected. This was a huge jump for me. As a student we are typically expected to do everything ourselves, but by leading ACM, I’ve experienced the importance of working with a team to reach our goals.