Programmed for Success
The students in Fundamentals of Programming worked in cross-disciplinary teams to develop final projects using the Python programming language. Teams were required to create a graphical user interface with elements such as buttons, icons and other visuals to help users navigate through the on-screen experience. Twelve Indian students worked with 12 teams of Wilkes students to complete projects that included a computerized recipe book, a trivia game and a seat reservation system, among others.
Working with the Indian students had multiple benefits, said Nate Martes, a first-year computer science major. His team was paired with a student named Gauri.
“Working with Gauri has shown me that certain parts of a project may be difficult, but working as a team can make them easy,” Martes said. Also, since Gauri is across the world, time management and communication on both ends of the project were extremely important.
Melanie Lear Genetti ’99
Genetti does it all from the RV she and her husband live in full time. “We’re digital nomads,” she explained, adding that internet access allows her to work anywhere. The couple sold the Pennsylvania homes they owned in Mountain Top and Drums in 2020. For the last four years, they’ve spent the winter in Florida.
Working with the air traffic software has brought Genetti full circle. As a high school student, she had set her sights on a career in aerospace engineering. After taking classes in the field, she found that she disliked drafting required for the field and switched to computer science, finishing her degree at Wilkes. While completing her bachelor’s degree, a summer internship at NASA’s Goddard’s Space Flight Center in Maryland allowed her to apply her computer science skills in an aerospace setting.
Genetti taught the introductory computer science course as an adjunct instructor at Wilkes for three semesters. Juggling teaching with full-time employment in the field was challenging. “The experience gave me a lot of respect for the professors I had at Wilkes,” she said, noting the considerable time required outside the classroom to prepare lectures and grade assignments.
Wilkes is part of a family tradition for Genetti: her late father, David Lear ’61, mother Florence ’72, and sister Erin Lear Bush ’99 PharmD ’14 all earned degrees from Wilkes.
McKenna Dolan, a DDMA student in the class, said the benefits of working internationally outweighed any challenges.
“We had a wonderful opportunity to work with Shravani. She was a great addition to our team and created a supportive environment for us to learn code,” Dolan said. “We had some difficulty with communication being that the time zone difference was roughly nine hours. We met at night, which was her morning, and when it was nighttime for us, she was just starting her morning. We immersed ourselves in a different culture with a student who shared the same class. I hope she had a good experience as much as we did.”
Exploring Gender Issues
Examining gender issues makes sense, Kapolka said, because computer science has long been a male-dominated field that discouraged women’s participation. “I felt strongly that we need to put students in the position of addressing those issues in the first course they take in the major…and show them the inequity,” Kapolka stated. One of the required texts for the class, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed by Men, examines such systemic bias. Working with a team of female mentors offered additional opportunities to recognize expertise is not limited to a single gender.
Scott Kinane ’99
In his position, Kinane oversees a team of developers and engineers who design and build automation solutions to ensure business critical systems stay up and running for Fortune 500 clients in industries that include finance, energy, manufacturing, global shipping and more. “We’ve done some really innovative solutions across the world,” Kinane said. “For example, I have a life insurance client in Japan. We did an automation for them tied to seismic data.” If there is an earthquake, the system automatically launches resiliency protocols that keep their systems going, he explained.
After graduating from Wilkes with a double major in computer science and political science, Kinane went to work for IBM as a software developer. In 22 years with the company, he worked in a variety of roles and locations, including a stint in Rome, Italy. After landing in Raleigh, North Carolina, he transitioned to senior management, earning an executive MBA at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. When IBM spun off its IT services business and established Kyndryl, Kinane transitioned to the new company.
Pondering the rapid evolution of technology since earning his degree, Kinane notes skills he developed at the University — such as the ability to navigate change and critical problem-solving — have helped him to succeed. “Being able to dissect problems, break things down into manageable pieces and then do the teamwork to arrive at a solution — those are the types of skills I took from my Wilkes education and still apply today.” Outside the classroom at Wilkes, he used those skills playing on the Colonels football team.
Kinane is married to Tara Wilson Kinane ’98, a graduate of the Wilkes-MCP Hahnemann program, who works in medical research running clinical trials. They have two children, Liam and Chelsea.
WHAT IS DATA SCIENCE?
“This class gave me an opportunity to work in design principles with the coding community, which was great,” Dolan said.
Alumni Involvement Key to Curricular Changes
The explosion of jobs related to the cloud underscored the need for a cloud computing major. “Some students are interested in the field, but they’re more application oriented and they want to do more deployment. They want to manage things more than write code. So that’s a good place for them to land because there are really good jobs and the cloud is everything now,” Kapolka said.
In developing the new major and revising the curriculum, computer science faculty also considered the requirements of accrediting bodies. The rollout of the revised curriculum and new majors began in fall 2023 and will continue over the next two years, as students enroll in the programs.
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
Chris Issler ’06 is one of the alumni who has been involved in mentoring students. Issler is a senior analyst for Mondelez International, a global company focusing on the snack food industry. The company includes familiar brands like Chips Ahoy, Oreo, Ritz Crackers and more. Issler, who has worked there for 15 years, built the software process used to check products when they arrive at large distribution centers across the country. He oversees Mondelez’s waste initiative, finding ways to get damaged products to discount retail outlets or to feed livestock so it is not wasted.
Simon Chu ’20
“Dr. Fred Sullivan (associate professor of computer science) suggested I apply for the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) funded by the National Science Foundation,” said Chu, a native of Liaoyuan, China. At Sullivan’s urging, Chu applied and was accepted to the internship as a Wilkes junior, introducing him to the highly competitive computer science program at Carnegie Mellon. Now he is a fourth-year PhD student in its software and societal systems department.
Chu’s research is in a subfield of software engineering called the formal methods. “As software grows more and more complex, we have to have an intellectual grasp of the system,” he explained.
He credits his Wilkes education with developing his interest in research. He got his start with professors Sofya Chepushtanova and Tony Kapolka on a research project using artificial intelligence for image recognition. He said his campus activities, such as being a resident assistant (RA), made him the person he is today. Chu recalled, “Being an RA was a significant part of my college experience, taught me how to communicate and collaborate with other people and helped me make life-long friends.”
Issler said he wanted to mentor a senior project group because he remembered his own experience completing the requirement. “I know when I did my senior project, it was very stressful with very long nights. But it was worth it,” he recalled. “When the project was done, being able to deliver the final product was a life lesson.”