Aggies facilitate a 24-hour hacking event at Huntsman Hall 

Spending 24 hours on a creation that could change the world is how some Aggies spent their weekend of March 18-19.   

Hosted in Utah State University’s Huntsman Hall, HackUSU allowed engineering, computer science students and anyone interested in coding to enjoy learning together in teams of their friends, coworkers and classmates.  

Chelsea Gunther, the HackUSU coordinator and graduate student, has spent months finding sponsors, delicious food choices and organizing this event. 

“HackUSU is an amazing celebration of students—college and high school—coming together and discovering something new and coming out of a 24-hour event with a marketable product,” Gunther said.  

According to Meg Despain, a member of the outreach committee for HackUSU expressed her excitement for the over 30 colleges and high school represented at the event.   

Participants also enjoyed networking opportunities with sponsors such as the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Maiden Voyage Software, USU Career Design Center and Lightning Kite.  

Student at the HackUSU event. Photo by Kate Smith

Maria Tena, a Member of the Space Dynamics Outreach team and Human Resources Specialist illustrated the company’s interest in HackUSU and opportunities for internships that participants of the event could apply for.  

“We are always looking for more internships and bright minds who are willing to work hard. We are at the HackUSU event because we know that many of the participants here have bright minds and are willing to learn,” Tena said. 

Throughout the event, teams could go up to any of these sponsor booths and gain insight into internship opportunities or resources.  

Amy Jensen, HackUSU participant said, “I loved the swag that I got from many of the sponsorship booths, I was able to talk to some of them and get ideas for my project and one potential internship opportunity that I am really excited about.” 

Student at the HackUSU event. Photo by Kate Smith

According to Gunther, one of this year’s newer additions was workshops that the students could participate in.  

Covering topics such as effective interviewing skills to Intro to Kotlin, there were workshops available for all students at any level of coding or career.  

Chandler Peterson, HackUSU participant said, “I really loved the workshops, they helped me get a foot in the door for many concepts I wanted to learn more about but did not know where I could learn about it.”  

Yet, the main focus of this event was the coding teams and facilitating them to produce a framework for a product that they can continue to work on and potentially sell after the event.  

According to Gunther, teams could come to this event to get ideas and advice from professionals and other students and many of the products that have been developed at events like this in the past have gone on to much success in their careers and even with their products.  

Teams participating in the event could enter their finished products to be judged at the end of the event in one of seven events. Including data analytics and visualization, game development, privacy and security, hardware, AI and machine learning, health and fitness and general.  

For each event, the winning team in each event received prizes ranging from desktop monitors to Fitbit watches.  

Gunther encourages all students to participate in this event in the coming years and develop something bigger than themselves. 

“If you have any idea that you want to develop and create, HackUSU is a great place to do it,” Gunther said. “Participants can really alter their communities and careers from the skills that they learn at events like this.”  

See what products won awards this year’s event on the HackUSU website.  

Photos by Kate Smith