computer science Archives - �� News

For cost-conscious college students, new S-STEM Scholarship offers much-needed relief��

Ryan Cornell — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Jose Lopez Vasquez is a junior at ��, a first-generation college student, and a reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps. Like many students on campus, he is mindful of the cost of his education and the long-term impact of student debt.

“I’ve always been conscious of how much money I’m spending,” he said. “I don’t want to have tons of debt I’ll have to pay back later, especially at high interest rates.”

And so for Vasquez, who works a part-time job at The Home Depot, financial aid from the Montgomery GI Bill, the Virginia Tuition Grant (VTAG), and a new National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM Scholarship has been a godsend in covering the full cost of his college education.

“Without the NSF S-STEM Scholarship, I would’ve struggled financially,” he said. “The scholarship really takes the pressure off my shoulders, because now I won’t have that debt looming over my head.”

Did you know?
More than 99% of all undergraduate students at �� receive financial aid.

Born and raised in Harrisonburg, Vasquez graduated from high school in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and attended Blue Ridge Community College while enlisting in the military. After completing recruit training, taking time to reassess his academic goals, and changing majors from business to computer science, he transferred to �� last fall.��

He is among an initial cohort of �� students receiving the NSF S-STEM Scholarship, which provides:

Up to $15,000 in unmet financial need annually for the length of the degree
A paid one-week Bridge to College program
A STEM mentorship program
An eight-week paid internship
Free conference attendance
Forest restoration opportunities in Park Woods (��’s on-campus woodland)

The scholarship is open to high-achieving, income-eligible students who are majoring in Biochemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Math, or Psychology (research/STEM track).

Applications for the S-STEM Scholarship
are due by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026.

For more information, visit .

‘A welcoming community’

Dr. Jim Yoder (foreground), professor of biology at �� and program director of Natural Sciences, poses with a group of students on a hike in the Shenandoah National Park last fall. The students are recipients of a new S-STEM Scholarship funded by the National Science Foundation.

Forming friendships at a new school can have its challenges.

Along with other initiatives provided by the scholarship, a Bridge to College program helps new �� students adjust to life on campus by moving them in a week early, introducing them to STEM faculty and staff members, and engaging them in activities to build camaraderie and form connections with one another. Students participating in the weeklong program receive a generous stipend for their time.

Ani Koontz, a first-year biology and secondary education double major from Newton, Kansas, is a recipient of the S-STEM Scholarship. She recalled traveling to Shenandoah National Park with students and faculty the week before classes, surveying salamanders and hiking trails, before bicycling around Downtown Harrisonburg on a tour led by city officials.

“That first week showed me how friendly and approachable my professors are,” she said. “They’ve done a great job creating a welcoming community.”

Another S-STEM Scholarship recipient, Mara Carlson, is a first-year psychology major from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “Many of us have become close friends,” she said. “I’ll see the other scholarship recipients around campus and we’ll say hello to each other.”

Through the scholarship, each student is paired with an academic advisor specific to their major, who can answer questions and help guide them forward. Carlson said she meets with Kathryn Howard-Ligas, assistant professor of psychology at ��. “We discussed a four-year plan, and I was really grateful for that,” she said. Part of that plan includes gaining invaluable experience through internships and conferences, additional perks of the S-STEM Scholarship.

Carlson said she already knew she wanted to attend ��, and that receiving the S-STEM Scholarship was “a nice surprise.”

For the Kansas-born Koontz, �� had always been on her radar, but she also considered attending in-state schools that normally would’ve been cheaper. When she learned she had been offered the S-STEM Scholarship and that it would lower her college costs to “a very affordable amount,” her choice to attend �� became an easy one.

“It’s 100% the reason I came,” she said. “When I got that, it meant I could completely afford to go here, and it honestly made �� more affordable than any other college in my area. It’s my joy to share how grateful I am because this is truly just an amazing thing that �� has.”

Adjunct faculty member talks AI on ‘Unpacking Education’ podcast

Ryan Cornell — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 21:01:26 +0000

Perry Shank ’99, adjunct faculty member of mathematics and computer science, appeared as a featured guest on the Unpacking Education podcast on Aug. 27. Shank, who also serves as senior director of research and development at CodeVA, spoke on the topic of artificial intelligence in computer science education. Listen to the episode

Computer science major wins prize at Harvard hackathon

Ryan Cornell — Thu, 29 May 2025 19:57:54 +0000

The problem of climate change can seem daunting, and individual efforts often feel like they don’t amount to much in solving it.

This quandary led Abraham Mekonnen, a rising senior at �� majoring in computer science, along with a team of three students from Queens College in New York City, to develop FootPrint Mayhem, a sustainability-focused platform that encourages and rewards users for minimizing their carbon footprint in creative ways through streaks, games, and points. Users can track their daily carbon footprint, take quizzes to learn eco-friendly habits, earn points and streaks for consistent actions, and compete with friends on a leaderboard. Although the platform is no longer active, it was available at .

“Think Duolingo, but for saving the planet,” said Mekonnen, who is spending the summer in New York City as a software engineer intern at Morgan Stanley. “We asked ourselves, ‘How can we help people learn while having fun at the same time?’”

Mekonnen and his team won the “Best Use of Defang” prize for their creation, besting more than 500 undergraduate students from around the world at . Defang is a tool used to develop, deploy, and debug hackathon projects. The annual 36-hour coding competition was hosted by Harvard University students from Oct. 11-13, 2024, on their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and brings students together to “collaborate, innovate, and build awesome projects in a short amount of time.” “Winning never crossed my mind,” Mekonnen said. “I was competing against people with vast knowledge from all these great and wonderful schools, so I thought there was no way I could win.”

But win they did. Over an intense 36-hour period, Mekonnen and his team worked tirelessly to develop an idea for a project, design it, and present it to judges. “I think we probably only slept for two to four hours during that time,” he said.

“This recognition from HackHarvard is incredibly motivating,” Mekonnen wrote in a post after the event. “It validates our belief that technology can make sustainability accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

He said the win has already opened new doors for him, helping him land his current internship at Morgan Stanley. “The computer science field right now is hectic,” Mekonnen said. “Even finding interviews is hard, so this has been a wonderful resume builder.”

He was also invited to present on a panel at the Horizon Conference, held at James Madison University in November, which brings together changemakers, innovators, and leaders passionate about tackling global challenges and fostering inclusive growth.

Mekonnen, who moved to Harrisonburg from Ethiopia at 12 years old, serves as president of the Computer Science Career Club and is a member of the International Students Organization at ��. He credits professors Dr. Daniel Showalter, Dr. Stefano Colafranceschi, and Charles Cooley with providing the foundational programming knowledge that helped him succeed.

He said he hopes to inspire others at �� the same way he was inspired by recent alumna Hebron Mekuria ’24, a computer science major who also won a hackathon—Black Wings Hacks in 2023—and interned at Morgan Stanley.

“People at �� might not think they can win and do great things,” he said. “I hope my story encourages other students to push themselves beyond what they thought was possible.”

The next HackHarvard competition will be held from Oct. 3-5, 2025. For more information about the event, visit:

$2M NSF grant creates access, belonging for STEM majors at ��

Ryan Cornell — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:25:00 +0000

A $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation provides scholarships, mentorship, tutoring and other support services for high-achieving, income-eligible STEM majors at ��.

The grant, awarded through the NSF’s , will fund up to $15,000 annually for each scholarship recipient throughout the length of their degree. Overall, the S-STEM Scholarship will fund a quality undergraduate education for 23 �� students among three cohorts over the next six years, beginning with first-year students entering the Fall 2025 semester.

The scholarship is open to academically talented students with financial need who are majoring in the following fields: Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, Math, and Psychology (research/STEM track).

Applicants for the S-STEM Scholarship must submit their application and reference forms by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025. For more information about the program and how to apply, visit: emu.edu/stem/scholarship

In addition to scholarships, the program offers students a paid one-week Bridge to College experience, where they can meet professors, learn material from their discipline, acquire study skills, and become better prepared for college.

�� Biology Professor Dr. Kristopher Schmidt said that some first-year students can struggle to adjust to life on campus, and that the grant aims to ease that adjustment.

“We want to create a sense of belonging,” said Schmidt, who is principal investigator for the grant program.

The program also provides funding for embedded tutoring services and paid tutoring opportunities for students, specialized advising, and guidance from professional STEM mentors.

“This would be a person outside the university in their field of interest who can encourage them, help them, and connect with them along their four-year program,” Schmidt said about the mentors.

The S-STEM Scholarship program offers innovative opportunities for place-based learning and funding for an eight-week paid internship. Students can use grant-funded resources to conduct research on forest restoration in the Park Woods space, which serves as a key learning lab for STEM students.

This latest grant builds on the success of a similar STEM grant that wrapped up in 2023.

By leveraging grants like these, �� lives into its mission and vision, outlined in its 2023-28 strategic plan Pathways of Promise of opening new pathways of access and achievement, and can help the NSF achieve its goal of diversifying the STEM workforce.

“We were thrilled to receive this,” Schmidt said. “We’re excited and grateful the NSF has chosen to invest in our students at ��.”

Faculty members Kristopher Schmidt, Jim Yoder, Daniel Showalter, Stefano Colafranceschi and Dean Tara Kishbaugh wrote the S-STEM grant proposal.

The one and only John Fairfield

Bonnie Price Lofton — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:37:17 +0000

This is a man��who spent much of 1970-71 in Belgium’s national library absorbing British computer research. He was learning French too in Brussels, so that he could use French to teach math, physics and economics at a Congolese mission school.

This is a man who lived with his wife in a mud hut for two years –��so remote in the eastern Congo that they needed to fly there in a small plane over a tree canopy as thick as broccoli heads packed together.

This is a man who got into a grad program at Duke University almost immediately after applying – far past any published deadlines, just a month before classes began. An intellectually provocative paper won him admission.

This is a man who made the world-renowned Rosetta Stone language-learning system possible through his computer know-how and vision.

The life of��John Fairfield ’70��could read like novel, if he chose to write it up.

Fairfield’s introduction to computers occurred during his 1968-69 year abroad at 400-year-old University of Marburg, where he was asked to use Fortran to do a linguistic analysis of Italian poetry. He would walk into Marburg’s computer center – with its massive mainframe attended by people in white lab coats –��and hand in his punch cards for processing, then later retrieve reams of resulting printouts.

Back at Eastern Mennonite College in 1969-70, Fairfield presented his eclectic array of coursework to the dean, Ira Miller, and asked, “How do I graduate?” Fairfield didn’t have enough chemistry courses to be a chemistry major – he had tested out of some of them. He knew German fluently, but needed another language to be a language major (French would be learned the following year). So he and Miller settled on “natural science” as his major.

Jumping to Duke University, Fairfield continued to be an unorthodox student while working full-time. (He and wife��Kathryn Stoltzfus ’70, who eventually became a Duke law student, had two children while they were both in grad school.) Duke’s fledgling computer science program relied heavily on faculty drawn from other fields – as was common during the birthing stage of computer academia. No Duke professor was involved in machine perception, the topic Fairfield decided to pursue, with or without their support.

“They kept saying, ‘Why don’t you do this or that?’ And I kept doing what interested me,” recalls Fairfield. “They didn’t know how to evaluate my work.”

Upon completing his not-understood dissertation, Fairfield had no assurance that the Duke faculty was going to grant him his PhD. He sent it to David Waltz, a renowned computer vision pioneer then at the University of Illinois, Urbana -Champaign, who grasped its importance. Waltz sent word back to Duke that he had granted PhDs for much less than what he saw in Fairfield’s work, and Fairfield got his doctorate.

Next came faculty appointments at James Madison University, where Fairfield remained for nearly 20 years, teaching all kinds of computer science courses, but especially relishing the 400-level research courses.

In 1992, Fairfield added his energy and talents to those of brother-in-laws��Allen ’65 and Eugene ’72 Stoltzfus, plus Greg Keim, to give birth to a worldwide business now known simply as Rosetta Stone.

They built a team which created and integrated three forms of software: human interface code for language learning via browsers; speech recognition code; and code running the servers on the backend. As vice president of research and development Fairfield was a hands-on boss. “There were more keystrokes of mine in the software we were selling than anyone else’s.”

Fairfield retired in 2006 when the company was sold to financial investors. Fairfield then shifted his focus to envisioning and establishing ��’s Center for Interfaith Engagement, where he remains active as a research fellow. He is the author of��The Healer Messiah: Turning Enemies Into Trustworthy Opponents��(April 2014, available at��rruuaacchh.org).

From local threesome to national Jenzabar��

Steve Shenk — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:30:43 +0000

It all started��in a corner of ��’s old administration building in 1980. Two employees began tinkering – on their own time − with ways for colleges and universities to manage their administrative affairs with a new technology called computers.

The employees –��Dwight Wyse ‘68, the school’s director of business affairs, and��Mark Shank, director of computer services − cobbled together a company they called Computer Management and Development Services (CMDS). Their first client was ��; their first employee was��Harvey Mast ‘80.

Mast, who shared with another student the distinction of being ��’s first computer majors, recalls one of his first computer classes: “We built a very simple computer out of a Heathkit package and inputted information with an eight-button keyboard, one 8-bit character at a time.”

CMDS soon moved to a farmhouse on Virginia Avenue, which was eventually torn down to make room for the expansion of Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community (VMRC). In 1983 CMDS moved to a house next to Miller Cabinet Shop at the southwest edge of town and in 1986 to an office building on Virginia Avenue north of VMRC.

The company grew to 160 employees, providing software and services to nearly 300 customers in 45 states. CMDS became one of the nation’s leading developers of administrative software for colleges and universities, serving the offices of admissions, registration, alumni, development, financial aid and accounting. Its best-known software was TEAMS.

In 1999 CMDS built an imposing corporate office building, designed by architects LeRoy Troyer and Randy Seitz, on Technology Drive off Mt. Clinton Pike near North Main Street (U.S. Route 11).

In 2000 CMDS made the momentous decision to be acquired by a new Boston company named Jenzabar. Jenzabar also acquired three of CMDS’s competitors – Campus America of Knoxville, CARS of Cincinnati and Quodata of Hartford.�� CMDS and two of the other companies maintained their own buildings.

After the merger, there was a period of significant employee turnover. A number of the key players in CMDS, including Wyse, left or were laid off. The imposing CMDS building was now too big, and Jenzabar moved its Harrisonburg offices to the headquarters of a former technology firm nearby at 1401 Technology Dr.

Jenzabar supports more than 1,000 campuses in the United States and around the world. Some 20% of all U.S. colleges and universities use Jenzabar software. Among them is ��.

“The core product �� uses today is Jenzabar EX, the flagship student information system sold by Jenzabar,” said Jack Rutt ’72, ��’s director of information systems from 1999 until last summer. “Several other systems which supplement the functionality of EX have been added over the years, including My�� and a retention management system.”

��Ben Beachy ’02, MBA ’09, Rutt’s successor at ��:�� “A longstanding rumor in our department is that �� was customer number one of CMDS, but I’ve never seen the actual database record to verify that.”

Today, 35 years after the founding of CMDS, Shank and Mast are still with the company. Fifteen �� alumni work for Jenzabar.�� half of them pre-date the merger. One of them,��Mark Showalter ’91, joined the day – May 1, 2000 − that the merger was announced.

The alumni at Jenzabar, in addition to Mast and Showalter, are:��Lois Ann Handrich ’67;��Don Bomberger ’72;��Dale Hartzler ’85, MDiv. ’08;��Brian Boettger ’86, S ’88, ’91;��Mike Engle ’87;��Mark Deavers ’89;��Mike Weaver ’90;��Robert Ranck ’90;��Dale Hess ’92;��Derek Christner ’97;��Eric Weaver ’02;��Mark Horst ’05; and��Jessie Groeneweg ’07.

From software to 3D carriage wheels

Lauren Jefferson — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:20:23 +0000

When asked what he does in his spare time,��Lynn Roth ’99��mentions his 3D printer, home built with the help of open source plans. He’s printed “doodads,” his catch-all word for a variety of objects to replace, repair or decorate things around the house for his wife, Anita, and a horse or two, as well as some carriage wheels, for his equine-crazy daughters, Kate and Leah.

At work in Wauseon, Ohio, Roth is just as multi-faceted. He is director of information technology with Solana, a company that provides business management software and related IT support services for agencies that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Roth has been with the company since 2003. (He worked at Jenzabar after graduation for two years and then in Wauseon, with Fulton County Health Center, for one year before joining Solana as a network administrator and software developer.)

Solana serves more than 130 providers in 23 states (one of its Virginia-based customers is Pleasant View home in Broadway, a ministry of the Virginia Mennonite Conference). The company is owned by Sunshine (formerly Sunshine Children’s Home), a non-profit, faith-based service provider for the developmentally disabled in northwest Ohio. The company was started in 1997 by Lynn Miller, a Hesston and Goshen graduate who developed the ProviderPro software that is the basis of the company’s line.

Roth, who studied at Hesston College before transferring to �� as a junior, enjoys the variety in his work. “Being a part of a small company, and working on the IT and programming side, really keeps things interesting,” he said. “I like to do all of it, but it’s hard to have a wide scope any more with how much there is to know about everything now. This role allows me to do some of each.”

A constant challenge for Solana’s clients is managing data specific to their needs, ranging from the usual business basics such as human resources and payroll, to more specific tracking of billing information, fundraising, client demographics and incident reports.

“We work with our clients to help them find more efficient ways to do their business,” Roth said. “That may be something as simple as adding electric time clocks instead of handwritten paper time sheets, so they can digitally track everything they are doing. We make our software as easy to use as possible, and the trainings short and simple to accommodate staff turnover.”

Recently, Roth has led the implementation of a virtualized data center that allows for upgrading hardware and handling hardware failure with little or no downtime, and a secondary data center that would function if the Wauseon site experienced a major disaster. He’s also helped design single-page web applications that “work on any device from a phone, tablet, or PC with a load balanced back-end” to accommodate new growth.

“We’re always developing new products or improving older products, designing new things and looking ahead to technologies we want to work on in the next few years,” Roth said, in a statement that encapsulates his creative and technical endeavors, from software to 3D carriage wheels.

In defense of learning weird stuff in college

Andrew Jenner — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:17:24 +0000

Running a power plant��effectively requires keeping tabs on an awful lot of data relating to fuel consumption, power output, weather conditions, grid demand, etc. & etc. And in turn, keeping tabs on all this data effectively requires clever software that allows users to visualize and understand what might otherwise be a confounding torrent of raw information.

John Swartzentuber ’85��has been working on that very sort of software with a company called OSIsoft for the past eight years. Swartzentruber is a development lead, working out of the company’s Philadelphia office. He leads a team of developers working on next iterations of the data analysis software, while coordinating with other team leaders, helping to plan release cycles, recruiting new staff and consulting with clients – power plants aren’t the only ones; many different industries have lots of data to manage – to improve the software’s “user experience design.”

An ideal user experience would render its designers invisible. When programs are working smoothly, doing what they’re supposed to, people don’t spend time thinking about why that’s the case.

“We strive to be unappreciated, almost,” Swartzentruber says. “If people don’t notice the software, you’re doing your job right.”

Accomplishing that often requires out-of-the-box thinking; new challenges keep things interesting.

“It’s not just rote,” he says. “You really have a lot of creative flexibility to figure out the best way to get there.”

Thirty years ago, when Swartzentruber was working on his computer science minor at �� (a major wasn’t available yet), he took a class called “Programming Languages,” during which longtime computer science professor��Joe Mast��assigned something involving a fairly esoteric language known as LISP. It was a toughie – so difficult, in fact, that Mast eventually cancelled the assignment. Inspired by the challenge, though Swartzentruber buckled down and kept at it and finally came up with a solution.

LISP isn’t something he actually uses anymore, but the appreciation it taught him for approaching problems from new angles has. Thinking of becoming a programmer? Go down the rabbit hole with something weird or obscure. Diversify your toolbox.

“It’s important to think in a different kind of way, to try something completely different,” he says.

Between Swartzentruber’s junior and senior years, ��’s nascent computer science program suffered something of a setback: its PDP-11 – the machine that every computer student shared time on – died. (The PDP-11 was a “minicomputer,” an amusingly dated description in this smartphone era.)

That meant Swartzentruber spent his senior year working on Apple IIe computers, which turned out to be at the vanguard of the coming PC revolution, and which ultimately meant that the demise of the PDP-11 was actually a stroke of good fortune for students affected by the loss.

“In a lot of ways, I felt very well prepared [for work after college],” he says. “We sort of got into the PC world a little quicker.”

Falling backwards into God’s calling

Lauren Jefferson — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 18:10:57 +0000

Dan Shenk-Evans ’92��characterizes his career in technology as “falling backwards” into God’s calling. For years, every position he sought in direct social ministry eventually led him reluctantly to a computer, where he would quickly solve IT problems and streamline organizational workflow.

“I wasn’t sure I would find meaningful work in computer science. I thought I should be in direct service, and I tried to find a way to do that kind of work, but it wasn’t what I was best at,” said Shenk-Evans.

Now director of information technologies at the Capital Area Food Bank, Shenk-Evans oversees the technological systems within a new 123,000-square-foot warehouse and office that provide food to more than 500 partner agencies, which in turn feed 478,000 people in the Washington D.C. metro area. His goal is to develop technology as a strategic asset so that more hungry adults and children can be reached.

And while he may not be meeting those hungry people face-to-face every day, Shenk-Evans says his work is enriching and fulfilling. “At some point, I’ve decided to be at peace with the idea that I’m a technologist,” he said. “That is how I serve. It took me 15 years to be able to say that: I am good at this. I’m not a spokesman or a fundraiser. I’m a mission-focused technologist and this is my contribution to society.”

Now Shenk-Evans can tell his story of “running away from computers” with a sense of humor. In his first year of Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS), he turned down a computer teaching position in Jamaica in favor of an agency liaison position at the Capital Area Food Bank.

“Almost immediately, someone was programming a custom inventory management system and he needed help,” Shenk-Evans said. “Within a few weeks, I was the database administrator.”

At the end of his first MVS year, he requested a different part-time position and was placed in a job referral program at the Spanish Catholic Center. “Again, I was trying to get away from computers, but I have a tendency to want to make things as efficient as possible, so I developed a database so they could track applicants, jobs, and employers.”

In the ensuing years, Shenk-Evans earned a Master’s of Divinity at Duke, which included taking a restorative justice course at ��, and took a two-year stint as executive director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate. There, his true aptitudes emerged.

“No matter what I did at this small non-profit, the IT work always fell on me,” he said. “I spent two years automating our office to make our organization more efficient. I set up the first email system, [and] the first network, and implemented a database to track our mortgages.”

Finally, a friend pointed out that his strengths – administrative and IT experience with non-profits – would be useful at his company, Community IT Innovators. From 2000 to 2010, Shenk-Evans was a senior consultant with CITI (described further on page 12). Then he returned to the Capital Area Food Bank as its first full-time IT director. Shenk-Evans now supervises a staff of three: a GIS specialist, an information systems manager, and a network administrator.

Asked what advice he would give others following in his footsteps, Shenk-Evans said:

For a long time, I had a narrow definition of what meaningful work was. I thought direct service was the most important way to help. Then when I tried to do it, I found out that I wasn’t very good at it. I had other skills. If you’re trying to do something that is outside your true skill set, you won’t be as effective at your work. Keep your mind and heart open to different ways to serve. Keep in mind that you’ll only be happy if you use your gifts to the good. Try to find the intersections between what the world needs, your gifts and God’s calling.

Weikle: Electrical engineering to computer science pioneer

Lauren Jefferson — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 17:05:44 +0000

In the male-dominated field of computer science, is used to being in the minority. The associate professor of computer science at �� can name all of her female students majoring in the field on the fingers of one hand.

One of those students, among the approximately 18 percent of women who will earn a computer and information science degree in the United States, is Jennifer Fawley, in the process of earning her second bachelor’s from �� (her first is in environmental sustainability).

Weikle and Fawley together attended the October 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Phoenix, Arizona, which attracted 7,500 women in STEM-related professions, particularly computer science.

At the convention, Fawley chose from a variety of sessions, workshops, and networking opportunities, from her particular interest of cybersecurity to data science, programming languages, cloud computing, wearable computing, hacking for social justice, and plenary sessions with technology executives from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Symantec, and Mozilla.

“Right now is a wonderful time for women in this profession,” Weikle said. “The field is changing so fast. If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, it’s OK, because, guess what? Everybody has to learn new things in this field.”

Weikle earned a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia. She began her career journey with a bachelor’s of science in electrical engineering from Rice University. She subsequently worked as an engineer at Tracor Aerospace and then Motorola Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. In a mid-career shift, she focused at UVa on computer architecture with an emphasis on memory system analysis and design.

At ��, she teaches a wide range of subjects, including Introduction to Computer Science, Computer Architecture and Operating Systems, and Analysis of Algorithms. She is currently involved in computer architecture research attempting to characterize parallel programs. In addition, she has conducted research on workload characterization for parallel programs, educational initiatives in computer science, and the effect of computing technology on society.

This article appeared in the , ��’s alumni magazine.��

Computer science students take first and third in national contest against 47 other teams

Kara Lofton — Tue, 13 May 2014 20:11:47 +0000

Teams comprised of �� computer science and math students beat 47 teams across the nation in a contest that required code-breaking under time pressure.

The �� teams took first and third place at this year’s Kryptos competition sponsored by Central Washington University. The first-place team was made up of freshman Aron Harder and seniors Stephen Quenzer and Josiah Driver. The third-place team included senior Mark Harder (Aron’s older brother) and Eastern Mennonite High School freshman Cameron Byer, the son of �� professor .

Kryptos is a code-breaking competition of secret writing, known as cryptanalysis. The 2014 competition included three encoded messages that teams worked on over a long weekend. Once an encoded message was cracked and the plaintext English was revealed, contestants quickly wrote a one-page description on their methods before moving to the next code. The teams were judged not only on breaking the codes, but on how quickly they did the work.

While all three of the men on the winning team are computer science majors, none of them had any cryptanalysis experience prior to the competition. In fact, both �� teams only entered the competition the day before it was scheduled to start and for the most part prepared by briefly Googling cryptanalysis strategies and the previous years’ problems, said Driver.

Quenzer, Driver and Aron Harder are all in Owen Byer’s statistics class. Their final statistics project involved collecting data and developing a presentation based on their findings. Unfortunately, as is the case sometimes with statistics, their data ended up being inadequate for clear findings, Quenzer said. They went to professor Byer for help and he offered them this alternative: If they would participate in the Kryptos competition, he would accept this in lieu of their final statistics presentation.

Mark Harder, who is a math and major, happened to be writing a paper on the history of cryptanalysis for one of his classes when he heard about the competition. He had developed a friendship with Cameron (the high school student), and the two decided to enter the competition just for fun.

“It doesn’t help to have a lot of previous knowledge,” Harder said, because “each problem is quite a bit different.” What is important is “being able to be flexible and think outside the box.”

Quenzer viewed his team’s crash-preparation for the contest and resulting win as no big deal, noting that typically “all three of us put a lot more effort into our studies than is necessary – we go above and beyond.”

The �� first-place team was the only team to solve all three problems. The �� third-place team solved two problems, but was just beaten time-wise by the second-place team.

Similar to ��, Central Washington University had two teams in the top three winning categories. Other teams that placed represented:�� Pacific University, Sarah Lawrence College, Western Washington University, Eastern Oregon University, University of Arizona, and University of Central Missouri.

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