Washington and Lee University
Major: Computer Science
Extracurricular Involvement:
Post-Graduation Plans: Currently applying to graduate school Ph. D. programs in computer science.
Favorite W&L Memory: Finishing 4th on the team and 13th overall at the Old Dominion Athletic Conference cross country championship meet my junior year in which we took the team victory in a very close race against Bridgewater College. My thirteenth place finish was good enough for second team all-conference and our team victory was the fourth consecutive ODAC victory, the most in the history of the school.
Favorite Class: CS 313: Theory of Computation. The most dreaded class in the major but also the most rewarding.
Favorite W&L Event: Mock Convention
Favorite Lexington Landmark: Healthy Foods Coop
Undergraduate research almost sounds like an oxymoron. Independent research opportunities are not typically associated with undergraduate universities, much less small private ones. But that's exactly what I have been able to participate in during my time at W&L. Ironically, the smaller setting of W&L has been the reason for the opportunities for academic exploration afforded me. The impressively small student-faculty ratio encourages a conversational atmosphere between students and professors in which I was comfortable discussing topics of possible research with my professor. Thanks to the Robert E. Lee Scholar summer research program, I have been able to take focused topics that have garnered my interest in the more general purpose courses and explore them in a more relaxed setting.
Following these summer research opportunities I have been able to participate in a number of events in which I presented my work to my peers. One of these events, The National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR), is a four day, interdisciplinary conference that pulls hundreds of students from around the country. My experience presenting my work, Parallel Computing in The Python Programming Language, at NCUR helped me to develop aspirations to further my education by obtaining a post-graduate degree. Had I gone to a larger state school with thousands of students, I can't be sure that I would have had the same opportunities.
During my time at Washington and Lee I have tempered my academic life with an active athletic one. Some of my best memories here have involved the cross country or track team, and I have been proud to win a number of conference titles as a General. The life of the scholar-athlete is truly made possible here in the Division III atmosphere. I can't think of many other institutions where the captain of the cross country team can also have a number of research projects to his name. At many larger schools athletics and academics are mutually exclusive but my time at W&L has proven that at this university, they most definitely are not.