Shelley Kandola `13

Despite being so small, the Computer Science department has given me a lot of opportunities to prepare myself for a career in Computer Science. This year, I participated in my first programming competition which exposed me to more complex programming puzzles than I'd seen in the intro-level classes. The end-of-semester projects that some of my CS classes have allowed me to experiment with what I know; after my first two CS classes I had already made a Vigenere Cipher-encrypted password-protected diary and a graphical interface for my own calendar application. I'm also a TA for the intro programming course.

In my Mathematics major, the department offers fun activities. The Q-Club hosts an annual Piathlon and bi-monthly math talks with pizza. Even without having any research to present, I attended the Hudson River Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (HRUMC) and got to watch fellow majors in the department and undergraduates from other schools give talks on their research. It was the first conference I'd ever been to and it was a great experience. After I graduate, I'd like to go to graduate school and earn a PhD in Computer Science. I haven't quite figured out what field of Computer Science I want to go into yet, but this summer I'm enjoying my SLU Fellowship titled Simple and Efficient Compact Graph Generation for Drs. Torrey (Computer Science) and Kratzmann (Geology), in which I'm writing graphing software for the Geology Department. I've also enjoyed keeping a blog about my fellowship. I'm also a fan of cloud computing and I would love to contribute to its development in the near future.