CDS Undergraduate Speaker Emma Steel
Undergraduate Student Speaker Highlights the Power of Community, Curiosity, and Responsibility at 2025 CDS Convocation
Emma Steel, the 2025 Undergraduate Student Speaker at the CDS Convocation, reflects on the supportive community, transformative academic journey, and ethical responsibilities that define the BU Computing & Data Sciences experience, urging graduates to build data-driven solutions that truly matter.
Good morning everyone, My name is Emma Steel, and I am truly honored to be standing with you all here today. Looking into the crowd, I see so many familiar faces- from classes, the tutoring center, and just wandering around the CDS building.
First, I want to thank our families and friends for not only being here with us today, but for standing by our sides through every high and low of our college journey. Whether you were physically present or supporting us from miles away with care packages, your love never wavered. I know my parents have received quite a few phone calls after data science exams- sometimes full of relief, and sometimes they were after Professor Onak's algorithms class.
To the incredible faculty and staff of CDS, thank you. You have not only equipped us with the skills to succeed but have also built this college from the ground up. It is because of your passion for data science and dedication to building this program that we are all here today.
When I first came to BU, I was a math major who had never even heard of data science. I couldn’t have told you what it meant even after my first year in the program. But like many of you, I took a leap of faith and switched into data science. I didn't just find a new major, I found a new community.
At a school as large as BU, it is easy to feel like just another face in the crowd. But at CDS, that’s never been the case. Here, our professors know more than just our names; they know our goals and dedicate time to building relationships with us that will last a lifetime. They encourage us to try, to experiment, and to fail, rewarding creativity and effort over perfection. I know in Professor Gold’s AI and Machine Learning course, I found this to be true while working on a project using neural networks to predict sarcastic emojis. The accuracy? Honestly, not great. But the experience was invaluable. Because the culture within CDS puts as much emphasis on the journey as the result. We are not just here to get it right, but we are here to foster creativity and curiosity.
During my time in CDS, I’ve worn just about every hat imaginable- tutor, orientation leader, peer mentor, teaching assistant, and student government president. If there was a signup sheet, odds are I was on it. These roles gave me the privilege of shaping student life both in and outside the classroom.
Within the classroom, I’ve had the privilege to work alongside Professor White and Professor Seferlis as a teaching assistant. They have taught me the importance of clear communication and the value of taking complex concepts and turning them into digestible material. Their dedication to their students and the stories they have shared from their careers have not only guided my own career decisions, but I am sure many of yours as well.
And as Student Government president, I’ve helped create spaces where students could connect away from computers and established our peer mentorship program within CDS. I have spent the last 2 years working to advocate for the needs of our undergraduate students to our administration to ensure that every voice is heard.
Because that’s what CDS is. A community.
It’s the friends who crammed with you on the 16th floor, stealing the reserved desks even though they aren’t ours. It’s the professors who sit with you for hours, patiently explaining concepts for the fifth time- I know some faculty here today who had this experience with me. It’s the staff like Shayne, Alessandra, and Laykn who always have a door open, ready to celebrate our wins and vent our frustrations. It’s the pets who reside on the 16th floor giving us a much-needed break from staring at code. And yes, sometimes it’s even dating a chatbot named Brad for a semester. Only at CDS could that be considered a valid project.
All of these experiences and all of this support have led us to this moment. But today isn’t just about what we’ve done here. It's about what we will do next.
Because with this freedom we have had to explore and experiment comes responsibility. We’ve spent years learning not just how to work with data but how to think critically about it. We have debated the implications of the tools we build. We have learned that every data point represents a human experience. That algorithms can reinforce inequalities or dismantle them. That what we choose to measure, and how we choose to interpret it, matters deeply.
As Jodi Petersen said, “Data is the language of the powerholders”. But we’ve been trained to be more than just data scientists, we’ve learned to be interpreters.
When we analyze housing discrimination patterns, we’re not just applying clustering algorithms, we are exposing injustice. When we create tools for underrepresented languages, we are not just solving a challenge, we are preserving a culture. When we build accessible visualizations, we’re not just making charts, we are democratizing information.
This is what makes CDS special. We don’t just learn how to build things, we learn how to build things that matter.
So as we leave here today, armed with everything this community has given us, let’s not just be fluent in the language of data. Let’s be its most empathetic and responsible interpreters. Let’s use this toolkit to amplify voices, challenge systems, and create a world where data empowers everyone. Congratulations, Class of 2025. The future is ours to shape. Thank you.