SCS Students Share Passions Through StuCo
Marylee WilliamsWednesday, November 5, 2025Print this page.
As Carnegie Mellon University students enter exam season, libraries fill, coffee pots overflow and, for some, roller coasters come to life.
The coasters — made from pipe cleaners — are the final project for Roller Coasters: Background and Design, a course offered through CMU's Student College (StuCo). Run entirely by students, StuCo gives students the chance to turn their passions into classes offered for pass/no-pass credit. Students get out of the lab, build community and teach their peers about their interests, from hip hop to chess.
Taylor Roberts, a theme park enthusiast and senior in the School of Computer Science (SCS), teaches the coaster course. He's one of several SCS students helming StuCo courses this semester. All of them are part of the rich history StuCo and SCS share.
Roberts said StuCo courses have enriched his CMU experience.
"Any given semester, there are probably 20 students on campus lecturing once a week about topics they love," Roberts said. "We have a Pokémon StuCo and a chess StuCo. I've learned Tetris, mahjong, type theory and sword fighting. I've learned so many random little things, and, maybe more importantly, I've met a lot of people who are incredibly passionate about the things they do."
Roberts' love of roller coasters started early because he grew up in Tampa, Florida, with Busch Gardens nearby. When he came to CMU, he joined the Theme Park Engineering Group, a club for people interested in themed entertainment who want to work in that industry. Someone from the club has taught Roller Coaster Design since 2016, and Roberts took the class twice before taking over as its instructor this semester.
SCS senior Kenechukwu Echezona is both a StuCo student and an instructor this semester. He's taking Roberts' roller coaster course and also teaching Intro to Freestyle Rap, which he wanted to teach because it's a great way to share his interests and improve his own freestyling skills. Echezona said StuCo courses offer students the chance to simply relax and have fun — something that can be particularly helpful for students with challenging course loads.
"StuCo courses can be a change of pace and a way to unwind from the rigor," Echezona said. "I believe it's important to always embrace and learn from new experiences in life. It makes us more whole as people, keeping us from being too rigid in what we already know. Trying new things can even give us interesting lenses to look through as we approach our primary work."
SCS and StuCo have ties that go beyond the students teaching its courses. The school actually helped create CMU's Student College in 2001. Mark Stehlik, now the University Teaching Professor in the Computer Science Department, said StuCo got its start when an SCS undergraduate asked to teach a class about the card game bridge.
"At the time, there were a number of aspiring bridge players in SCS who wanted to learn how to play, so it seemed reasonable to pursue this as a student-taught course," Stehlik said. "It was initially offered as a pilot in the Physical Education department because there was no mechanism for student-taught courses, so there was no department to house it."
Stehlik said one of the biggest hurdles at the time was making the distinction between a StuCo course and a club. The difference, he said, came down to teaching skills rather than hosting a gathering of like-minded hobbyists. After guaranteeing that StuCo courses wouldn't replicate any courses currently offered at CMU, StuCo launched in 2002.
One of the longest-running StuCos, Fun With Robots, is still offered today. CMU alumnus Brian Kirby and Tom Lauwers were its first instructors. Now, electrical and computer engineering sophomores Nick Yaeger and Matthew Kibarian lead the course. The pair agree that it's surreal to be at the helm of a course that about 850 CMU students have taken over the last two decades.
But just because a course has been around for a while doesn't mean it's stagnated. Each instructor brings something different to the class, updating course material or incorporating new lessons into the syllabus.
In Chess Tactics and Strategy, SCS junior Andrew Peng crafted lessons about DeepBlue, the chess computer that beat a reigning world champion. The work for DeepBlue started at CMU in the 1980s with ChipTest, a pioneering project that developed custom chess-playing hardware for computers.
"This will be my fourth time teaching the class, and every time we encourage each instructor to include whatever they're passionate about because chess is such a broad area to explore," Peng said. "You can talk about anything. It's a great experience."
Beyond the final projects and presentations, StuCo aims to create community at CMU. Roberts said that's one of the most important reasons to enroll in a StuCo.
"You develop a small community with your classmates for that semester," he said. "You get to know the people in your class better than you would otherwise because it's a room full of students. There's no intimidating professor in charge and a lot of collaboration typically happens. People are constantly chatting and engaging because everyone in the room is interested in being there."
To learn more about StuCo courses, visit their website.
Aaron Aupperlee | 412-268-9068 | aaupperlee@cmu.edu