When you sign up for a graduate degree program with Metropolitan College’s Department of Computer Science, you get more than just lessons on a virtual chalkboard—you build a foundation of applied experience that you can eventually take into interviews to help get the job you’re after.
Abigail Gualda (CAS’23, MET’26) and Nolan Thompson (CFA’24, COM’24, MET’26) have a couple of things in common. They’re both recent BU MET graduates—Gualda got a master’s degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Data Analytics, while Thompson got a master’s in Software Development—they both are soon to begin new careers, not long after completing their studies, and they both prepared for these new opportunities by spending recent years as postbaccalaureate fellows in a unique Boston University program that allowed them to oversee complex data science and computing projects run by fellow BU students.
Gualda and Thompson are part of the BU Spark! program, which recently had its Demo Day—a showcase of the semester-long, student-run data projects the two oversaw. Whether initiated by students with a vision or begun through partnerships with external clients, these BU Spark! projects included data visualization, data science, and engineering design, giving the pair of MET postbaccalaureate fellows valuable experience managing complex projects. They also got the meaningful opportunity to be in touch with real-world clients to help recruit and match them with student teams.
For Thompson and Gualda, as well as the students they supported, the exercise is a vital training ground, as they get reps and experience not only developing technical solutions but key skills like presentation, polish, professionalism, and confidence.
“I think that Demo Day is a real place for collaboration when competition is a very large player in the space,” Gualda told BU Today. “Students really learn what it means to work with one another and take it to the next level.”
Gualda says she sees her time in the computer science-focused BU Spark! program as a launchpad, an amplifying extracurricular that she completed while earning her master’s degree. Alumni of the fellowship program attest that Demo Day was a valuable conversation topic in subsequent job interviews, and past fellows have gone on to work at prestigious companies like Apple and Bloomberg.
Now, Gualda and Thompson are taking all they’ve learned during their time at Boston University’s Metropolitan College into new full-time jobs. For Thompson, MET and BU Spark! combined to make for invaluable preparation for his professional future. And with Demo Day, he says, he and the students he oversaw got the chance to network with both industry partners and the greater BU STEM community.
“It’s the first taste of the industry,” he said. “Clients come [to meet] a lot of really amazing companies and organizations.”
With more than a taste of industry, and new degrees under their belts, Gualda and Thompson are the latest examples of how BU MET doesn’t just teach you the lessons—it puts you in position to capitalize on them.
Read more at BU Today.