Last Thursday, September 16th, we had multiple instructors come and talk to us about their research and programs they teach. The first presenter was Ben Erlandson. He showed us different projects he worked on at Arizona State University. Most of them were virtual worlds that would teach us more about the environment and how we effect it. In the "Cloverdale" project, students were "hired" to help the community become more environmentally friendly. The "Postropolis" project was designed to teach users how large or small their carbon footprint was based on which mode of transportation they took. Ben is also working on re-doing "Cloverdale" in a program I forgot the name of, but it looks much better than the first version.
Then Dr. Tao explained to us that we would need to select an academic advisor to look over our ILPs. He showed us an excel sheet we could use to determine who would be our advisor. For my first choice of an advisor, I would choose Professor Young-jun Byun because I want to enter the software development field and he's the primary advisor for that program. I've also been in a few of his classes and he seems very knowledgeable. My second choice would be Kate Lockwood. I've never been in any of her classes before, but I met her last semester because she was the computer science club advisor. I've never been in her class before, but if I was, I'm sure this choice would have been very hard. I would actually be happy with either of those advisors.
Dr. Tao also mentioned we would have to have to choose a capstone advisor. For my capstone, I wanted to do something to help me get a job programming video games, so probably programming a game. But I also want the game to display my skills in software engineering, so I have something to show if I don't get a job programming games. I'm not sure which advisor I want for my capstone yet, but when I have a better idea of what my capstone is I'm sure the decision will be easier.
Dr. Tao then talked about his experiences in the real world. I was impressed by the fact that he started his own company with one of his colleagues. Then he shared his story of when he had to choose between working with machines that detected cancer and becoming a teacher with lower pay. At first, I was shocked that he chose becoming a teacher with lower pay. But then he explained that those machines were kept in the basement, and seeing the doctors smoke for their breaks, and then I understood why he chose becoming a teacher. Then I started to think about what I would have chose if I was in his shoes, or if I had the choice between a career that pays more but isn't interesting to me and a career that I loved but less pay, which one would I choose? At this point, I honestly don't know.
Then Kate Lockwood came in to talk about her research and the Information Systems program for CSIT. Like many I'm sure, I didn't know what information systems were. Kate explained it through a three circle venn diagram The three circles were labeled business, people and technology. The middle piece where they all met was information systems. The program seemed interesting, just not for me. She also mentioned that her research was in artificial intelligence. I kinda wanted to hear more about her research because I'm doing a paper on artificial intelligence in video games (which is a little different than artificial intelligence) for the writing component of CST 300.
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