While Kent State University already has one of the best computer science programs in Ohio, there is always more to learn, and HacKSU gives students another avenue to expand their computer science knowledge.
While many members are computer science students, it is not a requirement. With workshops, industry speakers and campus events, HacKSU is an open source for anyone wanting to get involved.
Kent State Today interviewed members of the organization to understand the code that makes this community so important.
“My favorite thing is seeing how passionate everybody is about their own individual area of computer science,” Austin Sternberg said. “Our club allows people to take that passion and build something out of it. If you’re presenting that night, you can teach other people as well.”
Sternberg, a senior computer science major in the Honors College, is the president of HacKSU, as well as KSU Combat Robotics. He joined HacKSU in his first year, after members advertised the organization during one of his classes.
Andrew Roddy, a junior computer science major in the Honors College, also joined his first year and said he enjoyed the mentorship aspect of the organization when he first started classes.
“I was terrified of CS IA. It’s a very daunting class initially, but they helped me with my work,” Roddy said. “Talking to people about it and about programming helps you become a better programmer 100% of the time.”
After his initial meetings and getting to know the previous officers, Roddy offered to help with club graphics, which eventually led to his current roles as vice president and the director of both events and marketing.
Meetings occur weekly and are run by members, who come up with their own lesson plans and unique topics.
Leadership typically comes up with the main topics, but members can also suggest ideas, programming languages or concepts. They then try to create a lesson around them or bring in an industry professional to discuss it.
“We’ve had a lot of different people come in, including software developers, professionals from manufacturing industries and in the aerospace field,” said TJ Raklovits, a senior computer science major in the Honors College, who serves as executive director of HacKSU. “We’re looking for them to tell us about their lives and jobs so that people can find different careers and figure out what they might be interested in pursuing.”
Raklovits’ role as executive director includes coordinating with other group leaders for meetings. He also has done lessons during meetings.
“I really enjoyed the Flask lesson I gave,” Raklovits said. “It was a relatively simple programming task, but for people who had never seen Python before, it was a really good way to get up to speed on how to get an application fully running and make complex things happen.”
With the nature of the club, members are given a wide array of perspectives and opportunities to build their skills and learn from each other.
Roddy compares computer science to art and architecture, explaining that there is more than what meets the eye when it comes to a final coding product.
“Programming is a lot like art because you can have two of the same end state, but completely different ways of getting there. It’s a lot of fun to see how passionate people are about programming and how many different ways there are to reach the end goal in someone’s mind,” Roddy said.
With that open-endedness in mind, HacKSU also provides opportunities to showcase these skills in events like their annual Hackathon, Kent Hack Enough.
Hackathons are time-limited events where participants need to create a program or tech-adjacent product, but not everything needs to be serious for this event.
“It’s a 24-hour hackathon where you can make anything,” Roddy said. “Last year’s was really fun. You could be an art major and make something or contribute something to a project. You can contribute no matter what major you are and make something.”
HacKSU meets once a week at 7 p.m. in the Mathematics and Computer Science Building, Room 228. The 14th annual Kent Hack Enough will be March 6-7, 2027, in the Design Innovation Hub, and registration is open now.
