Six giraffes — four stuffed animals and two costumed teaching assistants — greeted students as they walked into a classroom for a recent midterm exam.

While such a sight might seem odd at most universities, this particular giraffe is well-known throughout Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science (SCS). Its name is Cilantro, and it's the mascot for 15-251: Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science. The students who take this foundational course each year see Cilantro at study sessions, office hours, lectures and even exams.

Cilantro isn't alone. SCS teems with stuffed animals, illustrations and T-shirts depicting animals representing everything from core courses to research labs. To name a few, Clarabelle the Parallel Cow reps 15-210: Parallel and Sequential Data Structures and Algorithms; Torch the Triceratops keeps morale high in 10-315: Introduction to Machine Learning; and Vimothée Shellamet — a green turtle — supports students in 07-131: Great Practical Ideas in Computer Science.

"CS classes are challenging and kind of scary. The idea of having this little plush mascot that represents the class and is there with you throughout the course is reassuring," said Kailey Hua, an SCS sophomore with a concentration in computational biology.

As a teaching assistant (TA) for 15-251, Hua knows a bit about the mascots. In fact, she's responsible for Cilantro. She also served as head organizer for this year's mascot-themed SCS Day, which celebrates the diversity of passions and talents in the school.

"We thought it would be fun to highlight part of SCS culture that was a little less nerdy," she said. "A lot of people really like the course mascots, and we thought it would be cute and fun to have all of the mascots at SCS Day."

Mascots from the school's core courses took center stage on shirts and stickers distributed to students who attended the event. And during "Faculty Feud" — a gameshow reminiscent of "Family Feud" but with SCS faculty at the buzzer — teams held the stuffed animals while they answered questions about the school and mascots.

Cilantro the Motivational Giraffe

Cilantro got its start about a decade ago with drawings of a motivational giraffe, said Anil Ada, who teaches 15-251. Ada, an associate teaching professor in the Computer Science Department (CSD), isn't sure which TA discovered Motivating Giraffe — illustrations that feature a giraffe and encouraging phrases — but suddenly the TAs started showing them before exams and quizzes to encourage students. Eventually, they contacted the artist and received a custom illustration for the course: a giraffe teaching a pig 15-251 content, with the caption, "Math is hard, but you don't have to do it alone."

"The mascot reinforces this community aspect of things," Ada said. "This idea that we're in this together. We're here to help you and we will do this together."

The Motivating Giraffe drawing became the class image, appearing regularly on course materials. Then, in late 2020, the course adopted a real-life giraffe in Africa and received a stuffed giraffe as a gift. The name Cilantro came from Ada's first lecture, where he compares how people feel about math to cilantro, which is a polarizing herb.

"The goal is to motivate them not to be afraid of math and to embrace it," he said. "We're aiming to prepare the tastiest dishes with cilantro, and hopefully, everyone will like cilantro by the end of the course. Or, even if they don't like it, they know they can at least eat it when necessary."

The TAs made Cilantro a thing, Ada said. They ensure the mascot attends lectures and maintain its Instagram account.

Goose-Brained With Honk (and Chonk)

A viral indie video game spawned another one of SCS's first mascots.

Angela Zhang graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2023 with both her bachelor's in computer science and master's in entertainment technology. During her studies, she served as a TA for 15-122: Principles of Imperative Computation, and she's credited with creating Honk, a goose.

Zhang, now a software engineer at EA's Maxis Studios, said Honk's origins date back to the Untitled Goose Game, a 2019 video game where players get to be a goose that bothers residents of an English village. Zhang said all the TAs in 15-122 were obsessed with the game, and one weekend she drew one of the TAs as a goose and posted it in their Slack group.

Then everyone wanted to be "gooseified," she said.

Zhang said that by the end of the semester Iliano Cervesato, a teaching professor in CSD and the course's instructor, was "clearly aware that the staff had become fully goose-brained." During final grading, Zhang was called to the front of the class and presented with a gray goose, which she promptly named Honk.

Not long after Honk was crowned the course mascot, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns forced students and instructors to switch to remote instruction. Honk went home with a TA and remained a beacon for the class. Honk made it easy to theme lessons, giving students something real to help absorb complex material.

"Honk is a little bit of encouragement as you're going through courses like 15-122, which is not an easy class." Zhang said. "We often bring Honk out right before midterms and hard assignments, and we'll ask students to pat Honk for good luck. I think it's also really helpful from a teaching perspective to ground abstract concepts in something concrete — even if it's something silly like queues of geese."

It wasn't long until Honk was joined by Chonk, a human-sized stuffed white goose. Zhang said Chonk's arrival wasn't because they needed more emotional goose support so much as that the course's TAs wanted to make sure they had the largest mascot. Honk and Chonk are both fixtures throughout SCS, whether they're at events or being carted across campus to someone's house.

Turning SCS Into a Zoo

Mascots now represent more than just courses. The CMU Undergraduate Computational Biology Society uses a polar bear. There's also Little Baby Penguin, which shares the experience of being an SCS Ph.D. student on its social media accounts.

Lynnette Ng bought the small stuffed gray and black penguin duo at the Pittsburgh Zoo during her first outing in Pittsburgh about four years ago. Ng, a doctoral student in the Software and Societal Systems Department, thought they were cute and started taking photos with them around campus and in Pittsburgh. She sees these stuffed penguins as a way to encourage students to slow down.

"I think Little Baby Penguin helps to soften the Ph.D. experience," Ng said. "A Ph.D. is a serious endeavor, but when I go out and explore the area and post pictures on Instagram with the penguins, other Ph.D. students will ask where the photo was taken or if they can join me next time I go. It gives other doctoral students an avenue to find ways to relax. It also shares the stressful experiences of writing a paper or experiencing rejection. Little Baby Penguin normalizes the stress and reminds people it will be okay."

Ng isn't sure what she'll do with Little Baby Penguin once she leaves CMU. She knows she wants to go into academia and thinks the penguins will tag along. However, even if she leaves, SCS will still have plenty of animals to encourage students. At a recent photoshoot, at least 20 mascots made an appearance, from otters and parrots to narwhals and onions — alliums rather than animals.

Zhang said she was surprised by how fast the mascot tradition took hold at SCS after Honk. And even though Zhang has left Pittsburgh, she's glad she left her mark on the school.

"I tell people that I turned SCS into a zoo," she said.