Name: Angela Stewart
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Advisor: Sidney D’Mello (Emotive Computing Lab)
My Path to Engineering
While growing up, my dad was in the Marine Corps so we moved around a lot. When I was in middle school in Okinawa, Japan, I took a Q Basic programming course. I enjoyed learning about programming but did not have the opportunity to learn more beyond that course. My family moved to New Orleans when I started high school, where I attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. I studied theater there and loved it. Theater taught me about human emotion, behavior, and motivation and inspired me to be a director.
When deciding on college, I considered programs that blended directing and acting and applied to many drama programs. I decided to attend Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, as a theater major. However, I quickly had a realization that I was not passionate enough about theater to dedicate my life to it. It was something I enjoyed as a hobby, but I did not want to major in it. Largely on a whim, I changed my major to software engineering. I figured I was good at math-related fields and remembered enjoying the programming class I took years earlier. Since then, I’ve grown to love computing and the powerful ways computer science can affect change. Changing my major was indeed the right choice!
I considered going to graduate school during my junior year. I was not sure what to expect in graduate school, so I took part in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates. For two months, I worked on drone communication security. At the time, I did not love the particular subject of my research project. However, I enjoyed the process of research. I was inspired by my peers and mentors who were creating new knowledge that the world had not previously known. I wanted to be part of a group of people that dedicated their lives to discovering new phenomena, thus I decided I wanted to be a researcher and applied to graduate schools.
Currently, my research is on collaborative problem solving. My research group uses computing to understand collaborative processes and how measurable signals such as eye gaze or facial features, relate to how well a collaboration is going. We use this knowledge on to design interventions that help problem solving teams collaborate better.
Why CU Boulder?
I started graduate school at a different university. However, my advisor got a position at CU Boulder. I did a lot of research on CU and learned about the cool projects happening in the Institute of Cognitive Science. I was particularly motivated by the research in education that happens across fields. There were so many opportunities for work related to my passions that CU seemed like the best place for me to be.
CU has a thriving education-related research community. I am passionate about improving education and have found that CU has many like-minded researchers who have similar goals. Additionally, CU offers unique opportunities to collaborate on multidisciplinary projects with experts outside my field. The Institute of Cognitive Science is one example of CU’s commitment to multidisciplinary research.
On a non-academic note, I love that there’s so much to do around CU. Anyone can easily find something they’ll enjoy, and there are lots of food options!