Major Spotlight: Computer Science

With technology and computer science being such an up-and-coming field in our everchanging world, Barnard and Columbia are able to equip their students with the knowledge required to succeed in this industry. 

I came into Barnard with zero computer science experience. I decided to take a pre-intro course that Columbia offers especially for students who do not have any coding experience. Although I struggled at first, I was strongly encouraged to go to TA hours and office hours to get extra support and clarification. By my second semester, as I was taking my second CS course, I was a lot more comfortable and confident in my abilities in the class and in making connections with professors and classmates. These connections helped  guide me in what classes I should take, how I should be spending my summers and what I can do in future years of my undergrad experiences. 

Barnard’s new Computer Science Department allows students to take full advantage of the resources on a more personal basis. Like many of Barnard’s classes, the computer science classes offered to students are a lot smaller, fostering more personal relationships with the professors who teach them. I have taken two of my favorite computer science classes at Barnard. These classes are upper level courses that typically count for the CS elective requirements for the major. The first Barnard CS course I took was called Privacy in a Networked World taught by the Barnard Department chair, Dr. Rebecca Wright. In this 30-person lecture, we learned about the vast number of cybersecurity cases that have happened over the years. We discussed these case studies as we grappled with conflicts of privacy as a tradeoff for convenience. Towards the end of the semester, we all worked on a capstone project that exemplified a specific privacy issue in an effort to hopefully make change in the future of tech. The other Barnard CS class I am currently taking now is taught by my CS advisor, Professor Brian Plancher, called Projects in CS. He helps facilitate different projects related to anything in the tech world while holding workshops to help guide our progress through his lectures and guest speakers. My group and I are working on a project very close to my heart as we help design a curriculum and program to implement in New York City public high schools to help students with providing baseline knowledge of CS and the CS major.  Both of these classes have had a different level of support than the CS classes I have taken at Columbia because of the individualized support through these smaller niche upper-level classes.

Barnard’s Summer Research Institute allows students to conduct research with professors without having to compete with graduate students. This is an amazing opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience before going off into the real world. This program provided me with a stipend and also provides free/subsidized housing for students to conduct research over the summer. I worked with a Comparative Literature Professor at Columbia who was working on an NLP/ML project having to do with vaccine hesitancy. It was a great experience and helped me see the correlation between English and computing, my two majors. The program is 6 to 10 weeks in the summer with a capstone project fair at the end where you present your findings from the summer to the larger Barnard and Columbia community. 

Majoring in a STEM field may sound intimidating; however, the support systems at both Barnard and Columbia encourage students to continue their aspirations in this field. Even without my initial interest in CS, Barnard’s Modes of Thinking Curriculum probably would’ve pushed me to take some type of technology course with its Thinking Technologically and Digitally requirement. I love the fact that Barnard pushes its students out of their comfort zone and allows them to make their mark in fields that they may not be well-represented in.