Professional Development
During my first few years in undergrad, I worked as a Seasonal Shift Leader at my local Plato's Closet to make money during school breaks, but still have the flexibility to take a few summer classes or go on a family road trip across the country. While this approach to my breaks did offer the flexibility I needed, it hindered my ability to have formal professional development in my first and second years of undergrad. As I entered junior year, I knew I had to pursue more professional development opportunities, which included exploring data-based competitions and a once-in-a-lifetime internship opportunity.
2023 North Carolina Education Datathon
The Computational Clowns take on the 2023 NC Education Datathon, a two-day event that brings together teams across North Carolina and challenges them to solve an education-related problem using multiple data sources. The 2023 NC Education Datathon challenge was to use publicly available data to construct a statewide Out-of-School Learning Opportunities Index that demonstrates the relative accessibility of out-of-school resources for learning to K-12 students in different communities across the state.
Our issue: the problem across the state is not getting resources to the students. It’s getting students to these resources.
Our project: develop a regression model and visualization tools to provide policymakers with a proof-of-concept framework that predicts the number of new enrichment and hands-on learning-based museums and parks needed for county school systems to meet a passing school performance score. Our model considered factors such as the number of cars in the household, the walkability index of the county, and information on the number of museums, parks, and nonprofit orgs in the county. Additionally, we included libraries within our model; however, we found that the number of libraries was not statistically significant in predicting school performance status.
Data Science Internship at IBM
May 2023 - August 2023
Last summer, I completed my Data Science Internship at IBM’s Research Triangle Park office. Over the course of the summer, I worked with the System Quality Assurance team in tracking the performance of IBM internal and field systems through various metrics and dashboard, gained valuable business acumen, and became an engaged member in the RTP site community. In addition to my tasks and projects, I attended the IBM Carolina’s Women in Technology Conference, volunteered for the IBM Technology Girls Camp, and was a key member in a AI-based team project.