This experience report is part of an ongoing NSF-funded grant project involving an alliance of six California State University campuses, aimed at promoting Hispanic/Latino student retention through community engagement in early computer science courses. The project focuses on integrating socially responsible computing (SRC) into the curriculum to transform computing culture and invite marginalized students to participate. At Cal Poly Pomona, we integrated SRC concepts into the CS2 course on Data Structures and Algorithms. Initially, SRC concepts were introduced into assignments and projects, which showed promising results but highlighted challenges: the assignments and projects were instructor-created, leading to a gap between students and the concepts. Students passively received topics without proactive participation, resulting in a lack of perceived real-world impact.

To address this, we involved the local Hispanic/Latino community directly. Students visited community partners to identify real-world problems, which they then addressed through term projects, ultimately presenting their solutions to the community. Adopting a startup mindset, students interviewed partners, identified problems, developed prototypes, and delivered solutions. This hands-on approach, first implemented in Spring 2024, significantly enhanced student engagement and provided practical, impactful learning experiences. This report details the course design, implementation process, formative data collected, and reflections on the outcomes. The findings offer valuable insights and recommendations for educators aiming to foster community engagement and socially responsible computing in computer science education, with a specific focus on promoting Hispanic/Latino student retention.