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CS graduating senior wins college academic engagement award

Anonymous — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:07:12 +0000

CS graduating senior wins college academic engagement award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/07/2024 - 13:07

Grace Wilson

Ryan Slocum (CompSci'24) has received a 2024 graduating student academic engagement award from the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

He was recognized by his nominators for his involvement with the President's Leadership Class, his supportive performance as a T.A., engagement with 3 internships and for the way that he modeled thoughtful discourse in his classes.

In addition, Slocum led a successful initiative to map the leadership landscape and ecosystem at CU Boulder for the Center for Leadership.

His nominators were impressed by Slocum's fearless desire to learn, his intellectual humility and excellence of execution while keeping a balanced perspective and sustainable lifestyle.

How did it feel to win this award?

I’m honored to have won the academic engagement award. I feel that it's a nice way to wrap up my time studying at CU, where I’ve been involved with a variety of programs and opportunities. Looking through the list of other college award winners, it’s a group I’m extremely proud to be a part of.

What is the most important lesson you've learned at CU Boulder?

I think the most important lesson I’ve learned at CU has been that it’s really important to try new stuff, especially the things that most scare you. That’s when growth happens, so it’s important to use those things that scare you as a sort of compass needle to becoming a better person.

What advice would you give to a younger you?

I think I would say the same thing as the above question: try new things, do stuff that scares you. You’ll only grow as a result.

Is there anyone you'd like to thank for helping you get to where you are now?

My parents have been extremely supportive, so they deserve my biggest thanks. I’ve also had some amazing professors during my time at CU, including Dr. Angela Thieman-Dino and Dr. Paul Diduch, who nominated me for this award. And my friends in the Presidents Leadership Class have been an amazing group to learn from and get to know over the last four years.

What's one of your personal or professional goals for the future?

Personal: I would like to compete in a 100 mile ultramarathon.
Professional: Earn a graduate degree in robotics, and work on something impactful and challenging in the robotics space.

Ryan Slocum has received an academic engagement award for his involvement with the president's leadership class, academic activities and work for the Center for Leadership.

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CS graduating senior wins college research award

Anonymous — Tue, 07 May 2024 18:25:18 +0000

CS graduating senior wins college research award Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/07/2024 - 12:25

Grace Wilson

Téa Wright (CompSci'24) has received a 2024 graduating student research award from the College of Engineering and Applied Science for her natural language processing (NLP) research with Katharina von der Wense.

Starting through the Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR), Wright worked on NLP for education with von der Wense, researching automatic story generation for vocabulary learning in preschool age children.

Wright then continued her research with the lab, working to create more inclusive NLP technologies for her undergraduate thesis.

Some human languages have smaller datasets available than others. This lack of data makes it harder to use statistical models which can understand and process text from these lower-resource languages to others simultaneously.

Wright's project explored digitizing Lakota and Dakota language datasets through optical character recognition (OCR) to improve the performance of these multilingual models, with a focus on how different errors from OCR impacted the performance of the models.

How did it feel to win this award?

I was honored to win this award! It is always amazing to see the realization of your effort and work.

What is the most important lesson you've learned at CU Boulder?

CU Boulder has taught me that it is important to seek out opportunities on your own. Professors and students are usually happy to talk to you about your common interests and help you figure out your concerns or questions. The community at CU has taught me to be more openly curious. The other important lesson Boulder has shown me is the importance of balancing academics with time spent with friends or in nature.

What advice would you give to a younger you?

I would tell my younger self not to stress about the specifics of what you want to do. Classes, mentors, and opportunities will help shape your goals and discover your interests. Settling on a specialty too early on can close doors, so take your time finding what is interesting and exciting to you!

What's important for people to know about you?

I’m a Boulder native :)

Is there anyone you'd like to thank for helping you get to where you are now?

I’d like to thank Professor Katharina von der Wense and my PhD student mentors Maria Valentini and Abteen Ebrahimi for helping me navigate my first experiences with research. They have changed the trajectory of my academic career and I am so grateful for their guidance over the past year.

What's one of your personal or professional goals for the future?

My next goal is to get my PhD in computer science and I ultimately hope to be a research scientist in a company where my work can have practical applications.

Téa Wright has been recognized for her natural language processing (NLP) research for education and endangered languages.

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COVID-19 and graduate program admissions

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 16:12:59 +0000

COVID-19 and graduate program admissions Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/05/2020 - 10:12

We understand that the COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive to all and that student experiences in the wake of this have not been equitable. In response to these events, we recognize that some applicants will have concerns about the impacts these events could have on admissions. The graduate programs at the �鶹��Ƶ are dedicated to recruiting and supporting diverse, talented students, employing holistic application review processes and supporting students when they arrive on campus.

We want to be clear that we understand:

students have been facing and will face unprecedented challenges during this time.
testing centers have suspended operations, or moved to remote testing.
many students and institutions have chosen to adopt the Pass/Fail (or Credit/No Credit) option due to these events.
due to this disruption students may not have performed to their usual abilities during times of remote study or challenging classroom adjustments.
some research projects will have been interrupted or will be incomplete as a result of university and facility closures.
many students will be unable to take on internships and summer research programs or other professional development initiatives.
there are myriad other challenging circumstances that have arisen in individuals’ experiences.

We will take this all into consideration as we review applications holistically, understanding that our goal continues to be a graduate student cohort of future leaders, full of diverse life experiences and perspectives that will add new dimensions to our existing graduate community. If you have any questions about your specific circumstances, please contact rajshree.shrestha@colorado.edu.

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