Me, a computer science grad student?

Graduate student panel session held during CS-Saturday.

The Department of Computer Science has been working on many fronts to address the under-representation of women and minorities in computer science, a problem affecting computer science departments across the nation and impacting research and education at all levels. To address one aspect of this problem, the Department held its first “CS-Saturday” event on Saturday, October 1, 2005 (www.cs.umass.edu/cs-saturday). The purpose of this event was not only to generate interest among college juniors and seniors in graduate study in computer science, but also to increase the degree of their success in the application process, the process of obtaining a graduate degree, and in subsequent computer science careers. “Although our hope is that our department will benefit from this event through increased graduate applications from underrepresented groups, our goal was to generate interest in computer science graduate study in general, not just at UMass Amherst,” said Professor Andrew Barto, chair of the department diversity committee. “We focused our advertising on underrepresented groups, but attendance was open to all.”

The Department invited interested juniors and seniors from a number of mostly local colleges to attend a day of information sessions on many aspects of graduate school. Thirty-six interested juniors and seniors attended, almost half of them women, from Williams College, Amherst College, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College, Rochester Institute of Technology, Wellesley College, Tufts University, Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, Howard University, and UMass Amherst. In an effort to expand student participation from schools outside the New England area, the Department and the Northeast Alliance provided funding for four Howard University students to attend.

Department faculty, students, and staff welcomed the students to the event with morning refreshments. During the lead-off session, “Why consider graduate school?,” Professor Neil Immerman discussed the options and opportunities that a Ph.D. in computer science could provide. He also revealed important information about graduate school that many undergraduates don’t know, such as the fact that students usually get paid to attend. The next session was a “Career Options” panel discussion with faculty and guests from industry and government labs who talked about their experiences and careers. Following a catered lunch, a panel of four UMass Amherst graduate students explained what it is really like to be a computer science graduate student. Williams College Professor Andrea Danyluk then gave an inspiring talk about how it is possible to balance life with a career in computer science. After an afternoon break, which included an informal poster session during which visitors chatted with some of our graduate students about their work and watched a robot demonstration, Professor Lori Clarke provided detailed insights into the graduate school application process, including how to select schools, who to ask for letters of recommendation, and even advice on which boxes to check on the typical application form.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the day was the graduate student panel, with Gary Holness, Brendan Burns, Özgür Simsek, and Jen Neville sharing their experiences in graduate school at UMass Amherst. “These students beautifully conveyed the challenge and personal fulfillment of pursuing a Ph.D. in a supportive environment,” said Barto. “I think it was Jen who said one of the day’s memorable comments about graduate school: ‘I am never bored’.” One of the students from Howard was glowing near the end of the event and thanked everyone for the day. She said that she learned so much about grad school that she never would have imagined, and that she planned to share it with her local ACM group when she returned home.

The event organizers plan to do a follow-up email to all the participants next May to see how many of them chose graduate school. “If we have influenced a few students positively in this direction, as we believe we have, then we were successful,” said Clarke. “It was both a job very well done and a very successful outcome.”

The department thanks all the faculty and student attendees and participants, and a special thanks to our outside visitors, Andrea Danyluk (from Williams College) and Warren Greiff (from MITRE; UMass Amherst CS Ph.D. ‘99), and to those who helped fund this effort: CS Department Chair Bruce Croft, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) Dean George Langford, former NSM Dean Lee Osterweil, NSM Associate Dean Gordon Wyse, and Sandy Petersen from the Northeast Alliance.