Megan 'one to watch' in coding
A young woman from north Westmeath has been named as the one to watch in the fast paced, mathematical world of coding.
Megan D’Arcy, who is in her final year at Queen's University, was selected from a panel of 23 exceptional young women by the NI branch of the global organisation ‘Women Who Code’ at their Annual Awards Ceremony.
The Castlepollard Community College past pupil was named their ‘Rising Star’.
Describing it as an honour, Megan told the Westmeath Examiner: “I was grateful to be nominated for this award and the opportunity it gives me to in turn shine a spotlight on the work I am doing in university promoting coding, women in STEM, a new society I helped found and the work of the gender and equality boards in my school at Queens.
“I had amazing female role models at primary and secondary school. St Feichin’s NS in Fore is a magical place there is no doubt about it and in my last years Ms Fanning and Ms Healy gave me such a great grounding in maths and science. At Castlepollard Community College my love of science and maths was really fostered.
“One of the things the school did for me was to recognise the challenges my dyslexia posed. It was a substantial undertaking in terms of timetabling but the whole school team worked to allow me to step back from the Leaving Cert compulsory language, allowing me to swap into a second maths Leaving Cert, with the amazing Ms Killian, who was just such a brilliant and inspiring maths teacher.”
Megan’s work in college and the wider community formed part of the reasons for her recognition.
She believes that it’s important to inspire young girls in school as much as possible and to work to create pathways for them.
“My friends and I take part in everything. Hackathons, STEM table quizzes, Pokemon Raids. It’s a really important part of being a girl in STEM is finding your tribe so we work to be inclusive, and when I was PAMSoc president last year I organised drop-in events, cups of tea and chat mornings, karaoke, five-a-side football, cinema nights – anything and everything to encourage friendship building and create support networks.
“My mam joked that if a baddie needed coders for some nefarious scheme, he would just need 10 large pizzas and a set of free water bottles. That is of course not true… a tray of doughnuts from Tim Hortons would probably be sufficient!”
Megan believes that its important that science, coding and data science have higher profiles in schools.
“My friend Becky and I entered BTYSE, a first for the school, when we were in our TY. It was such a real eye opener to see science laid out in all the different ways and meet all the school kids that were getting sincerely stuck into science for solutions.
“That doesn’t stop in school – science is fun and exciting and collegiate and even when we are competing, we are building each other up and supporting each other. It would be great to see data science and coding on syllabus – it is a big industry.”
Megan graduates this July and will be taking up a post with tech company Kainos.
“This last year has been amazing. My placement at Allstate Northern Ireland gave me the opportunity to speak at the ‘Everything is Data’ meetup and WITA events, the Hackathon’s gave me an opportunity to meet and compete against talented people in coding, the university and union have been so supportive of the panel talks for women in STEM that I organised, and the establishment of the Domestic Abuse Awareness Society and my role on the gender and equality boards of my course’s school.
“I visited Boston as part of the Queens Future Leaders Programme and now this award. All in, I’m thrilled. So a big thanks to everyone who has supported me to get this far, only for you!”