(Courtesy of Yeshiva University) As the summer of 2020 approached, the students in the Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women computer science departments saw many internship opportunities evaporate because of COVID-19.
This presented a serious problem. Not having a productive summer project to add to the résumé and losing out on chances for networking with tech professionals could have a negative impact on students’ academic and professional careers.
But Prof. Judah Diament, chair of the department at Yeshiva College, and Prof. Alan Broder, chair at Stern College for Women, were determined that the pandemic summer of 2020 would not be a lost summer for their computer science students.
They huddled with their computer science faculty and industry volunteers to design imaginative in-house software development programs to help students sharpen their computer science skills. “I’m not aware of another university or department,” said Prof. Diament, “that took on that level of responsibility for its students,” while Prof. Broder added that “these in-house projects, mentored by professionals and YU faculty, were a true ‘reinvention’ of the internship experience.”
They also reached out to their extensive networks of professional and industry contacts to see who could offer what now seems the “new normal” demanded by our pandemic times: a virtual comprehensive internship where the instructors, mentors and students would work remotely but collaboratively on projects that had substance and challenge.
Because of their exhaustive and dedicated efforts to create internal and external internships, 50 students (24 at Yeshiva College and 26 at Stern College) found themselves engaged in intellectually challenging, educationally exciting and personally fulfilling computer science projects, all done remotely by students, instructors and mentors scattered across the country and the world.
Judging by the responses of the students and their instructors and mentors, what could have been a catastrophe turned into a productive educational experience that was also a great deal of fun and satisfaction.
At Stern College, the internship projects included working with a research astrophysicist at NASA writing computer code on the work of Maimonides, indexing the Talmud using natural language processing, building a map application completely from scratch and writing open-source code for data visualizations (under the guidance of Prof. Lawrence Teitelman and Dr. John Canning, president of Shakumant Software), to just name a few of the projects.
One student, Debbie Cohen ’22S, actually did her internship from her home in Caracas, Venezuela, where she had gone to be with her family during the pandemic. She and her colleague, Lizaveta Kemerava ’22S, worked with Tuvia Lazar, managing principal at the Capital Technology Group, on the mapping project.
Lazar was more than pleased with the performances of the interns. “The Stern students were outstanding, and in the words of the supervisor who ran the program, ‘They are by far the best students I’ve ever taught, and every single one of them is very close to being employable as a junior engineer.’”
The Yeshiva College projects included designing software for YU’s registrar and office of student finance, building a suite of data-recording tools for a company building homes in Florida, working with mentors from Google on controlling social distancing inside stores and applying deep learning to improving the classification of vegetation.
Zechariah Rosenthal ’22YC, who worked with three other students to “revamp the entire company’s data pipeline” for INB Homes in Florida, not only enjoyed the hands-on work but also learning about “the messiness of building things in the real world, both in software and more literally houses, which taught me the value of clear communication and good teamwork practices.”
Rainer Richter, vice president of operations at INB Homes, found the experience very useful for his company. While it required a lot of hands-on management because the work was being done remotely, “the interns delivered excellent work.”
Brendon Collins, University Programs Specialist at Google, along with a group of Google mentors, challenged their four interns to design a web platform that allowed customers to navigate businesses that must cap in-store capacity due to COVID-19 restrictions.
All the Google mentors appreciated the challenges the students faced educating themselves on new web technologies and getting used to each other’s work habits and skills, “but they’ve done very well, all things considered,” said Collins. “Their passion and drive are evident, and we’ve been happy to mentor these students as they navigate the project’s ambiguities in a methodical and professional way.”
The benefits of what the computer science department did to help its students went well beyond salvaging a summer’s work. It helped the students more deeply understand what they are studying in computer science and why they are studying it. Estee Brooks ’22S “learned that you can apply computer science to any topic you are passionate about” and Cohen loved that computer science “demands dedication, lots of passion and a good attitude toward learning new things.”
They were incredibly appreciative of how their professors went the extra mile to ensure that they had a fruitful and enjoyable summer. “I am really grateful to Prof. Broder for helping us in our professional growth and inspiring us to learn more and pursue our goals in the field,” said Kemerava. Cohen agreed: “I feel very grateful for this opportunity and for having all these amazing people as professors and mentors.”
Yonatan Berner ’23YC summed it up well when he said that it was “truly great to have professors who care very much about each of their students’ success. Our professors worked hard to organize a productive summer full of learning and building. I very much appreciate the opportunity I was given, and I am very thankful to all who made it happen.”
For the instructors and mentors, they were constantly pleased by the competence and enthusiasm of the students. Dr. Jeremy Schnittman, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, found them “so talented and dedicated to the project—I don’t think a single one was absent from a single class!” Dr. Joshua Waxman, assistant professor of computer science at Stern College and head of the natural language project, was very impressed “with the dedication of the students and the quality of the code they produced,” and Dr. F. Patricia Medina, assistant professor of computer science at Yeshiva College, who oversaw the vegetation classification project, learned that “our computer science students are well prepared to take on research problems.”
Alex Porcelain, vice president of cybersecurity at Goldman Sachs, summed it up well in speaking about the projects he directed for the registrar and office of student finance: “These guys are great! They’ve more than exceeded my expectations in organizing a project, researching many new technologies and driving all development forward to completion. YU students are smart and motivated—it doesn’t take them too much time to achieve meaningful results.”
