This last year, I went back to school to complete a long-term dream of getting a Ph.D. and studying how communities share data. If you are new here, I spent five years at Washington University working in the Energy, Environmental and Chemical Engineering Department. My work focused then on data sharing, specifically supporting the air quality community and understanding long-range transport of smoke and dust. The short story – that department wasn’t a fit.
In August 2021, 15 years later, I started in the Info Science Doctoral Program at CU Boulder. I rode my bike to school several days a week. I got back into the groove of courses and every time someone asked me how it was going, I said, “I LOVE IT!” I have loved everything about it. This program is a fit! It is so much fun to have found vocabulary, learn about history of human centered computing, practice social science methods and design, be part of the EPiC Group led by Dr. Leysia Palen and be advised by Dr. Palen.
This year I took six classes, in addition to what’s listed below I took two semesters of INFO seminar:
- Fall 2021
- INFO 7000 – Introduction to doctoral studies
- INFO 5919 – Human Centered Computing: Survey and Synthesis
- Spring 2022
- INFO 5609 – User Centered Design
- Media Studies 7051 – Qualitative Research Method
- Summer 2022
- ATLAS 5519 – Impractical Programing (Python)
- Museum Studies 5021 – Special topics
I have added some of my work to portfolio section of the website. This year, my focus was could I do this. Would it work? The resounding answer to my self is yes, I can do this. For year 2, I will finish my coursework in Spring 2023 and I hope to launch my dissertation research and write and publish at least one paper. More to come here.