Student Group Spotlight: JumboCode

JumboCode is an undergraduate student organization founded in 2015 by students in the Department of Computer Science that offers software to assist and support local nonprofits in their civic and social endeavors. With 176 members and several projects generated each year, the organization provides Tufts students the opportunity to contribute to their community while fortifying their technical and collaborative skills. Each team is led by a project manager, tech lead, and designer, who work alongside developers of various skill levels to complete their projects over the course of the academic year. A supportive community, JumboCode offers technical workshops and training for its developers, granting all members the opportunity to hone their skills in a practical applied manner and gain invaluable experience that is useful in the workforce.

In recent years, JumboCode has actively served the community through collaborative projects. One past project included creating a platform for G{Code}, a Boston-based nonprofit that provides computer science education to Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous young women and nonbinary people of color. The overall goal of the project was to design and develop a full-stack web app alternative to Canvas, offering users additional resources such as scheduling office hour appointments and an FAQ forum. In addition to learning how to write and develop the software, with programs such as MongoDB, Next.JS, and FastAPI, team members encountered other lessons and challenges that allowed them to grow as developers and collaborators along the way. One student jokingly stated, “One of [JumboCode’s] major exports is learning!” 

Many JumboCode team members have enhanced their skill sets through their experiences with the group, such as organizing team projects, hosting services, learning and teaching new technologies, and implementing the widely popular AI service, ChatGPT. Recently, JumboCode hosted the Department of Computer Science’s first student-run hackathon in five years. Going forward, JumboCode hopes to expand its scope of clients and continue to help students use the skills they learn at Tufts to give back to communities in the Greater Boston area.