Career Aspirations

Throughout the Computer Science program, you have learned valuable skills with career options in mind.

As you near the culmination of this program, it is time to reflect on your career choice and set your future direction.

Trace the development of your career choice and plans for the future from your assignment into the Computer Science program until now.

Have you changed your career plans? If so, what prompted this change? If not, why have you remained with your original plan?

My career choices / plans have not drastically changed over the course of this C.S. B.S. program. But they have changed significantly since I started my educational journey. The greatest factor of change in my decision was the pandemic lockdown. I sold my house in the first two months of 2020, and was planning to finish my education in my hometown, 1000 miles away from where I had been living / working / going to school. I ended up needing to find a program that I could do remotely, and SNHU seemed like a good choice. So I made the switch to computer science, and I decided that even if I couldn’t pursue chemistry, that it would be a better investment / career path to become a software engineer.

How has your thinking about your career evolved?

My time spent in the program has helped me refine what I would like to eventually end up doing career wise. When I started the program last year, I was very close to having dual B.S. in both Biochemistry (4-5 courses off), and Russian Studies (2 courses off). A deciding factor in my transition to computer science was that there isn’t much I can do with an undergrad Biochem degree, any of the careers that I was interested in required a minimum of a masters. After starting the Computer science program I realized fairly quickly that I made the right decision. I thoroughly enjoy the challenge that writing code provides me with. I am hopeful that I can find a job / career path that will include my prior studies, and this led me to the decision to pursue a masters degree in computational science + data science. I would like to end up in a career working on / with software that can be used for simulating reactive chemistry. This is a relatively new, and emerging field, and I would very much like to contribute to it in any way that I am able.

Have you completed any research about your choice of career? How has this impacted your thinking? Have you thought about seeking an advanced degree or certification after earning your undergraduate degree?

I have invested a fairly significant amount of time into both thinking about, and researching graduate programs, as well as the necessary requirements to work in my desired field. I would still need a masters degree, so that is what I am planning to do upon conclusion of this program. I have been looking at degree programs that have a focus on computational science / data science + chemistry. Even if I decide to leave academia after the masters, I think that there would be some very interesting career opportunities opened up by my degree choices. Many of the careers that I would like require 2-4 years experience with a masters / no experience with a related doctoral. My ideal / dream job would be to end up working for a national laboratory as a computational chemist/scientist. I will keep looking for potential career availabilities as I work on my masters, but it is comforting to know that even if I don’t end up getting as far into my education as I would like, that I could still end up doing something that I love, writing software. I am very content with my decision to focus on computer science.

Which course outcomes have you achieved so far, and which ones remain?

Course Outcomes

• Employ strategies for building collaborative environments that enable diverse audiences to support organizational decision-making in the field of computer science.
• Design, develop, and deliver professional-quality oral, written, and visual communications that are coherent, technically sound, and appropriately adapted to specific audiences and contexts.
• Design and evaluate computing solutions that solve a given problem using algorithmic principles and computer science practices and standards appropriate to its solution while managing the trade-offs involved in design choices.
• Demonstrate an ability to use well-founded and innovative techniques, skills, and tools in computing practices for the purpose of implementing computer solutions that deliver value and accomplish industry-specific goals.
• Develop a security mindset that anticipates adversarial exploits in software architecture and designs to expose potential vulnerabilities, mitigate design flaws, and ensure privacy and enhanced security of data and resources.

I believe that with the conclusion of my second artifact, that I have achieved three of the five course outcomes from the provided list.

The first of these outcomes is to, “Design and evaluate computing solutions that solve a given problem using algorithmic principles and computer science practices and standards appropriate to its solution while managing the trade-offs involved in design choices.” I believe that the data structures and algorithmic principles that I have used up to this point are following quality practices and standards for computer science, and that my design choices are well founded.

The second outcome is, to “Demonstrate an ability to use well-founded and innovative techniques, skills, and tools in computing practices for the purpose of implementing computer solutions that deliver value and accomplish industry-specific goals.” The methods that I have chosen to use for my capstone final project are using the best techniques that I could find in the documentation and by reading through code examples online. I sought to use industry standard, quality tools, and strong, efficient data structures for my program operations.

The third outcome is to, “Develop a security mindset that anticipates adversarial exploits in software architecture and designs to expose potential vulnerabilities, mitigate design flaws, and ensure privacy and enhanced security of data and resources.” I believe that I have thoughtfully considered flaws in my codebase, and that the implementations that I have chosen to use adequately mitigate potential security vulnerabilities.

The two that remain are, “Employ strategies for building collaborative environments that enable diverse audiences to support organizational decision-making in the field of computer science,” and, “Design, develop, and deliver professional-quality oral, written, and visual communications that are coherent, technically sound, and appropriately adapted to specific audiences and contexts.” The reason that I haven’t achieved the first outcome is mostly due to the targetted audience of my final project. It is aimed at employees within the financial investing firm, and is an application it provide their internal teams with access to retrieve and modify the stored data for clients of the firm. I believe that with the finishing of my portfolio, I likely will have fulfilled the outcome focusing on delivering quality communications. This is because I will have completed submissions for oral, written, and visual communications this term that I believe are up to the standards that are mentioned in the outcome.