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Year in Review
[ “Year in Review” is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student. You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year. For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]
G.O.A.L.S.
[ “G.O.A.L.S.” is a place where students write about how their planned, current, and future activities may fit into the Honors & Scholars G.O.A.L.S.: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement. For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.
Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. For example, consider course work, study abroad, involvement in cultural organizations or activities, etc .
Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. For example, consider research, creative productions or performances, advanced course work, etc.
Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom.
Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society.
Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.]
Career
Jack Ruch
10/21/2016
STEM Scholars
Interview Essay
This assignment is designed to get underclassmen to connect with three people on campus. The goal is to learn about a variety of opportunities that are available to us. First, we needed to interview an upperclassman to gain an understanding of what college is like at higher levels. For this section, I accidentally interviewed two upperclassmen, because the first upperclassman I interviewed was not a STEM major. Although one of them was not a STEM major, I learned a lot from both interviews. The two upperclassmen were Becca Bradley and Jake Kowal. Next I interviewed a Graduate student/Teaching Assistant to receive advice to succeed in college. The TA I interviewed for this section was David Palzer, he is the TA for my cse 1223 class. My final interview was with a professor, Wenbo Sun my calculus 3 professor to learn about research opportunities and learn to be successful in classes.
To find people for the interviews the I just asked the TA that I knew the best and the professor of my favorite STEM class. I ended up accidently finding both upperclassmen. One of them was a peer leader at my orientation and the other one is my RA.
I interviewed two separate upperclassmen for this assignment. They were Becca Bradley and Jake Kowal. First, I interviewed was Becca Bradley. During the interview I learned that her major is not within the STEM categories (which is why I also interviewed a second upperclassman) however I still received useful information from this interview. I learned that a great study habit is rewriting your notes for a class. This makes it easier to remember the material once you have gone over it twice. The second upperclassman I interviewed was Jake Kowal, the RA of my floor whose major is Marketing and Economics. I learned that the most influential class he has taken is macroeconomics his freshman year. He had not declared his major before took this class. When it comes to studying he says he first finds a good quiet area to study at such as the libraries and does his work ahead of time instead of the night before the due date. He said that he got lucky finding research by just being friends with his religious studies professor. This year Jake is a Resident Advisor which keeps him more involved on campus than he would have otherwise been. As a Resident Advisor he occasionally has to deal with difficult people and he does this by trying to understand their point of view. The interview with Jake taught me a great deal about life as an upperclassman.
The Graduate student/Teaching Assistant I interviewed is David Palzer. He is the Teaching Assisant for my cse 1223 class. I chose to interview him because he is my favorite Teaching Assisant. For undergraduate he went to Western Washington University and his major is Computer Science Engineering. During his undergraduate he did a master’s fast track program for preparation and research, where he would get a master’s degree in five years instead of a bachelor’s degree in four years. He said that he did this program “on a whim” with not a lot of long term planning beforehand. This program made the transition to graduate school very smooth. He chose computer science as his major was because he really enjoyed his high school computer science classes. He never had any internships, however he did participate in research. As an undergraduate he took way too many unnecessary classes and too many general education classes. I learned about the responsibilities of a graduate student from this interview. These include research, looking for a research advisor, taking core classes, and all of the responsibilities that come with being a Teaching Assistant. He told me that a great way to look for research positions is to talk to professors you have classes with that you enjoy.
The process of finding scholarly articles is not that difficult once you know what you are doing. The first step is to go the site Scopus, here where you can find a variety of scholarly articles. On Scopus the use of proper search terms is key, so to start you first type the topic you are looking for using the AND statement to get more specific results. Next click adds another search field and switch it two affiliations. Here you can specify if you want to only see articles from a specific college. Scholarly articles can often be a bit difficult to read as many of them required a lot of prior knowledge about the subject. By doing a little bit of research beforehand you can greatly increase the amount of articles that you can actually decode. For my particular field scholarly articles can be extremely useful as the peer review nature of them makes them reliable.
The professor I interviewed for this is Sun Wenbo. I interviewed him because I enjoy the class he teaches which is calculus 3 and I enjoy complex mathematical theories. He did his undergraduate at Peking University in Beijing. He attended Northwestern University for his PhD in mathematics and is currently doing post-doctorate at Ohio State University. His research is in the branch of analysis, in particular, ergodic theory and dynamical systems. To simplify the concepts: dynamical systems are systems that describe the change of a system over time and ergodic theory is way too complex to explain in this essay without taking up twenty pages. The reason he became interested in this subject area is that during his undergraduate he read a book on ergodic theory and found it incredibly fascinating. From this book he discovered that there is a connection between two separate parts of mathematics which are ergodic theory and combinatorics and that the goal of his research is to find the connection between these. When asked about undergraduate research programs for students interested in the field of mathematics he said that he did not know of any because he did his undergraduate in China. He said that for graduate programs there is American Mathematical Society sessions and online workshops on the internet. Lastly, he believes that self-learning and independent thinking are the important for success in college.
This assignment taught me how to network with different types of people at college. From many of these interviews I learned different skills such as finding organizations to join and talking to professors about research. This assignment was very helpful in some regards such as talking to professors. In other areas this assignment was a retread of skills I already had such as networking with upperclassmen and Teaching Assistants. The most difficult part of this was making sure everyone I interviewed actually had some relation to STEM. Ultimately, it was a slightly frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience.
References
Works Cited
Eckmann, J. -P, and D. Ruelle. “Ergodic Theory of Chaos and Strange Attractors.” Reviews of Modern Physics 57.3 (1985): 617-56. SCOPUS. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
Mackey, M. C. “The Dynamic Origin of Increasing Entropy.” Reviews of Modern Physics 61.4 (1989): 981-1015. SCOPUS. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.
Artifacts
For students in high school one of the first important step toward college is entrance exams such as the ACT. When preparing for the ACT students will look for any help they can get. In many instances students will end up paying exorbitant amounts of money for programs that, more often than not, don’t help them all that much. Early my freshmen year of college I was invited to start a program where we make ACT help videos. Our goal is to provide helpful free video’s of guides, tips, and tricks to prepare these students taking the ACT. In an effort to create these helpful guides our first order order of business was to compile our knowledge of the ACT so that we could give adivce specific to the each section. In order to begin filming these videos and get the information out here we will first have to create a YouTube channel for the distribution of the guides. We will be splitting up the information into a series of shorter videos about different topics. The videos will be shorter because a longer video will lose many viewer by he end. Keeping them short will allow people with shorter attention spans to get all the content without getting bored and giving up. The videos will also be quite jovial and funny because if the students find the information funny then they are much more likely to remember it. The three other people who are involved in the program and I will all be getting in front of the camera to provide this experience. The videos will be created with all of these guidelines in mind to create an engaging and helpful experience.
These guides are designed to help students achieve their potential. Many students cannot afford ACT prep classes and feel behind because of it. With these videos students will have unprecedented access to free informational videos designed to increase their scores. I feel that doing this is a great way to help students everywhere. When I was in high school I would have loved to have had help in this manner instead of repeatedly brute forcing information about the test through taking it many times. I believe this will help a lot of students.
About Me
My name is Jack Ruch. Ever since I was young I have loved computers. As I grew up my interest in computers grew as I learned more about them. Early childhood interests, like building and creating with Lego’s, transferred over to building and creating with code. Even before I knew I wanted to work specifically with computers I was always very interested in STEM fields. From a young age my parents encouraged my love for STEM fields and throughout my life I have looked into many different fields, unable to decide on just one. I eventually decided on working with computers and now I’m pursing a Computer Science major. However throughout my life I’ve been interested in a wide variety of fields, from Aerospace engineering to Hydrogeology, and while I’ve chosen one I will always continue to love all of STEM.
All throughout high school and middle school I’ve participated in STEM related events. One example is an organization called Science Olympiad. Science Olympiad is a competition consisting of taking math and science tests in various events based on different subjects. I’ve participated a variety of different math and science based events over the course of middle school such as an event based around the physics of light, an event all about electricity, an event about aquifers and Hydrogeology, and an event about motion physics and energy transference. Going into High School our school didn’t have a team so to continue to participate in this program I coached middle school kids in the various events described above for all of high school. My senior year of high school our AP physics class participated in a variety of physics based competitions. One such competition had us building giant bals wood bridges and another had us creating an overly complicated rube goldberg machine. I have had so many great experiences with STEM throughout my life, and many of these experiences are what made me love STEM so much.
In order to further my STEM education my senior year of high school I applied for a summer internship at GOJO. It is part of a summer student program where they have (usually college) students come work within the company for the summer to gain real world experience. This internship was a great experience that exposed me to both office life in a modern global company and real computer scientists at work. It allowed me to get a feel for what working in this profession would be like. This experience gave me an appreciation for what the field of computer science is like at the professional level.
My goals for the future are to continue my current path and to achieve the most I possibly could. I very excited about my future. I anticipate the years to come in college and learning much from the classes that I will take and the experiences I’ll make. My ultimate goal is to have a great profession in the computer science field doing what I love. Originally I was skeptical about joining the STEM scholars program, however now I believe that this STEM program will help me to achieve the goals that I have laid out for myself.