Bowdoin Students Explore Many Paths to Sustainability

Apartment parking lots aren't usually where people imagine climate innovation happening. But Yang, a computer science major, is working at Orange Charger, a small start-up supplying multi-unit complexes, like apartment buildings and condominiums, with a suite of EV chargers.

The company is responding to the state's market conditions: gas is relatively expensive in California, many Californians drive EV cars, and the state has adopted building codes requiring that new multi-family complexes include pre-wired EV-ready parking.

Yang found his way to Orange Charger via a Bowdoin alumnus, Ian Matheson '24, who Yang described as his "manager, mentor, and friend." When Matheson told him about the internship opportunity, Yang was excited by the chance to both work for a start-up and to gain more coding experience with a small team.

"It's helping me learn and grow as a developer. The learning opportunity here is immense," he said. Last year, Yang was a coding intern at a much larger and more established company, L.L.Bean, in Freeport, Maine.

Additionally, he said he's gaining an education beyond coding: "I'm not only learning about software engineering, but am becoming knowledgeable about business, EVs, and mechanical engineering."

Yang credited his Bowdoin computer science classes with giving him a theoretical grounding in the field, as well as the free courses that CXD makes available to students. Two summers ago, he used Bowdoin licenses for Coursera to teach himself JavaScript and web-app development

"What I'm doing now is very practical," he said. "I'm doing full-stack development, which means I'm working on the front-end and back-end of the website. Bowdoin doesn't specifically teach that, but it gave me all the resources for me to learn this on my own time."