We are very pleased to announce that the first recipient of the VCCCDRA Sponsored Don B. Medley Scholarship, Angela Duran, will be making an appearance at our upcoming Zoom VCCCDRA 2021 Annual General Meeting on March 17.
To give you an idea of who this outstanding awardee is, we provided an excerpt of the essay she submitted as part of her application for the scholarship in our recent edition of the VCCCDRA newsletter, The Monitor – Winter 2021. With Angela Duran’s permission, below find a copy of the entire essay.
- Please explain your interest, experience, and goals in computer studies.
Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to be. The day I started to consider computer science as my field of study was when I attended my first introductory programming class in my sophomore year of high school. Since then, I was determined to learn all I could, spending much of my free time during high school on websites like Codeacademy and CodeHS. Unfortunately, I never had a computer of my own to continue practicing at home. To remedy this, I spent numerous hours at my school’s library until I decided that enough was enough and began doing yard and caretaking jobs around the neighborhood to save up for a cheap laptop. My hard-earned laptop served me well, but sadly its CPU burned out from my extensive use over two years. Along the way, however, I was able to participate in programs such as Girls Inc Eureka!, which provided me with a stipend that contributed to me accumulating enough funds for an even greater laptop, which I am still using today.
Throughout my high school experience, two clubs significantly impacted my interest in studying programming. MESA was the first foot through the door for my programming passion. Every year UCSB would host MESA day which had various competitions for groups of students to sign up and participate in. In particular, my favorite was the sumo robots event. In this event we needed to program and build a robot with Lego Mindstorms that would push the opposing robot outside a ring. It was mind-blowing to see our robot come to life and do what we told it to do for the very first time. The second club that sparked my interest was my high school’s robotics club. The year I joined was also the start of the club. Our club was part of the First Robotics Competition (or FRC for short), in which the organization hosts competitions across the world for teams to compete against each other. This was a giant step forwards moving from Lego robots to actual industrial-grade robots. For the two years I participated, I was the lead programmer. Our first year we won the Rookie All Star award which guaranteed us a spot to compete at the Worlds Competition hosted in Houston Texas. This was a life-changing experience, as I got to feel the accomplishment of all my contribution to the team pay off with a functional robot. I am proficient in two languages, C++ and java, with some minor experience working with python. The fields that primarily interest me are Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. While programming is my main focus of study, I also am extremely curious about circuits. While my skills with circuits aren’t as developed as my programming skills, I found some overlap between the two. By understanding how the circuits operate and are able to receive information, it has undoubtedly evolved my understanding of programming applications. I have found through my experiences that exploring relative fields is a great supplement to developing a greater appreciation for my subjects of interest. The fact that computer science can be so relative in so many creative ways; it’s difficult not to want to explore everything! However, while I have narrowed down my desired area of expertise, I am still leaving my mind open to absorb any knowledge that comes my way. My drive to learn has never been so strong before. One of my big goals is to get my Master’s in computer science. This big goal will be the steppingstone I need to reach a much bigger goal, eventually starting my own startup company that specializes in technology to help save the environment. Keeping our earth healthy and alive is very important to me, and it would be a dream come true to protect the earth while doing something I love. My big idea is to create robots to clean our oceans and forests of debris without harming the natural wildlife, while ensuring that more pollution is not created with the birth of these robots. I want to be able to contribute to the continuous evolution of technology while also maintaining awareness of our environment.
- Please tell us about Community and school activities you are involved in
Networking is very important to me, and I believe in order to maintain a strong network you need to be involved in your community. I am an active member of Ventura College’s MESA program. I attend their workshops and study sessions. I make sure to utilize the direct access to tutors, professors, and councilors at scheduled hours. I am also active in Ventura College’s Computer Science Club. In this club we work on coding projects and are able to receive valuable feedback from our professor and experienced upperclassmen. Most recently the club has helped me prepare for my first hackathon at UCSB. I was able to form a team and present my project to judges. It was an incredible experience and I was able to talk with many professional programmers, such as employees from Google and Invoca. Outside of Ventura College I also volunteer as a mentor for Oxnard High School’s robotics team. With their competition building season finally starting I plan to assist their programmers by debugging and providing positive feedback for their code. Additionally, I will be willing to assist them with any needed wiring. I am not there to help them create ideas, but rather support them.