About a year and a half ago I became a student researcher in the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Nurturing program offered by the Math and Computer Science Department at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU). This program gives preference to prominent minority students who are majors inMathematics, Computer Science, Physics, or other related fields of study. I, being a Computer Science major, am truly excited to be apart of this program. The program continually exposes me to several things in which I before had a limited background. The programs director is Dr. Linda Hayden, she is the Principle Investigator of the Program. Through her guidance I am continually being introduced to an enviroment that is truly rich in the development and establishment of technical and research skills.
          The purpose of this program is to encourage students to learn more about their major and to give them hands on experience with several aspects of their major. The program does this by assigning various students to research groups. The groups concentrate on various fields such as Multimedia, System Administration, Physics, and Networking. Each group has its own mentor(s) who guide each research group in the accomplishment of the research abstract assigned. I had the priviledge to be on the System Administration team Spring semester of 1999 and 2000. Our mentor Marie Koltuniak decided to give our group a first hand experience at some of the jobs of a system administrator. So our abstract was to format the hard drives of four Silicon Graphics Indy's (SGI's), installing new operating systems and software, and setting up user accounts. Also we used the four SGI's to set up a small network.
          Through this experience, my interest in my major has grown tremendously. I had always planned to attend graduate school. This program and the experiences have sealed my decision to look farther into graduate studies and research. I began to "go the extra mile" and learn things and gain skills that the average computer science majors would not learn in a classroom setting.
           During my first year in the ONR program, I was very fortunate to be chosen as an intern by Naval Research Laboratories (NRL) in Washington, D.C. While at NRL, I was assigned to the Virtual Reality Laboratory (VRL) division. I was given an assignment by my menton Paul Maassell to maintain and upgrade the VRL web site. This internship allowed me to experience real life functionings of a professional institution. I began to understand the importance of internships in the development of ones professional goals.
           While in the ONR program at ECSU, I will fully take the advantagesa and use them to the accomplishments of my professional goals. My goals after receiving my Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, Math Minor, are to pursue my Master's Degree and later Doctorate Degree in Computer Science.