Week 1: Welcome to UNC Charlotte!
It's week one and I am very anxious about my summer project. It seems that I am one of the first researchers to arrive. The campus is a lot bigger than what I am use to which gives me a lot more to explore.
The first day was very lonely and quiet. I thought that I was the only researcher moving in at first. On the second day, while I was waiting in my room, I received a call from my mentor, Dr. Barnes, inviting me to her house for a BBQ dinner. I also met two other researchers, Hanan and Michelle. I realized that they were also working in the gaming lab for the summer.
The BBQ dinner was very nice and Dr. Barnes doesn't seem like the stereotypical computer science professors that I am used to at Winthrop. She was young, active in other areas beside computer science (such as dancing and scuba diving) and the research projects that she was conducting were very different from the old standard business computer science projects that I am so used to working on. She was also very relatable and easy to talk to which really made me less anxious about the project.
Instead of boring talk of computer science in the old days working with business companies like IBM, she discussed with us how excited she was that we were involved with the DMP project for the summer and the issue with the lack of women and minorities in the computer science field. She also talked to us about graduate school and how this project can really decide whether or not we are ready for graduate work.
At this point, I am very excited and very nervous about my summer project. I will be working with Java programming language and computer graphics, two areas that I have no experience with. But she assured me that the project was feasible with hard work, patience, determination, and help from our graduate assistant, Eve Powell, which we met at the BBQ dinner.
We (Hanan, Michelle, and I) spent the rest of the day getting to know each other, hanging out, and having fun!
The third day was day one of my summer research experience. Hanan, Michelle, and I were given a brief tour of the lab by Hunter Hale, one of the graduate students that work in the lab. After the tour, Dr. Barnes decided to let Hanan and I work on the choreography tool and Michelle, a returning researcher, was going to work on a database.
Dr. Barnes gave us the rules of the lab which included working in the lab at least 8 hours a day, 40 hours per week (Hanan and I decided to work from 9am-5pm). We were allowed an hour lunch break in which there was an option to eat on campus or at one of the local restaurants. For the first week Hanan, Michelle, Eve, Hunter, Amanda (another grad student), Dr. Barnes, and I went to lunch at the local restaurants.
Before we could get started on the dance tool project, our first task was to complete a few introductory tutorials to java and computer graphics. Our first tutorial included printing "Hello World" as output and creating an addition GUI. The first tutorial was pretty easy, but the next tutorial was going to be a little tough. We had to figure out how to render a 3D cube to a canvas and manipulate it using swing controls.
Besides our summer project, we had other obligations as well. Every Thursday, we had to do a weekly presentation of what was done during the week, what we plan to do next week, and a brief Literature Review which includes a brief summary of a technical paper that was related to computer science topics. Every two to three weeks, our presentation must also include a Game review which gives a brief summary and review of the game from a game designer’s point of view.
Since this was our first week of research, we had presentations on Friday. To see my first presentation, click here.
The presentation includes my literature review of “Preliminary Analysis of Factors Affecting Women and African Americans in the Computing Sciences” by Jamika D. Burg and Tiki L. Suarez. The research paper, as the title suggests, discuss the factors of why there is a lack of African Americans and women in the field of computer science. It also includes the work that I did with the addition GUI and the “Hello World” program.