Four Computer Science Students Elected to Phi Beta Kappa
Matthew Blum and Michael Wagner are Fall 2012 Phi Beta Kappa Initiates; Jonathan Lehman and Taylor Nelms joined them as Spring 2013 Initiates. Phi Beta Kappa is the highest academic honor awarded to liberal arts students in the United States. Membership selection is based on intellectual honesty and curiosity, careful scholarship, creativity, good character, and a commitment to the life of the mind. While members of the election committee do consider a candidate's GPA during their deliberations, they give great weight to faculty recommendations to determine the depth and breadth of candidates' academic endeavors. For all four of our 2012-2013 inductees, the depth and breadth of their academic endeavors was clear.
Matt Blum graduated in May 2013 with a double major in Computer Science and Chemistry. Matt received a prestigious NIST Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and spent the summer of 2012 in residence at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. During his time at William & Mary, Matt also was an active participant in Chemistry Professor Kristin Wustholz's Lasertastic research group. Upon graduation, Matt joined Booz Allen Hamilton in Herndon, Virginia as a consultant.
Michael Wagner graduated in December 2012. Michael spent the summer and fall of 2012 as a member of the SEMERU research group headed by Professor Denys Poshyvanyk. During this time, he worked on incorporating software repository mining as a new feature of FLATTT, an Eclipse plug-in tool for impact analysis. Upon graduation, Michael joined Business and Engineering Systems in Ashburn, Virginia as a software engineer.
Jonathan Lehman graduated in May 2013. During the summer of 2011, Jonathan worked on an Upperclass Monroe Scholars Summer Research Project looking at techniques to improve software development for mobile devices. Upon graduation, Jonathan joined Capterra in Arlington, Virginia as a junior developer.
Taylor Nelms graduated in May 2013 with a double major in Computer Science and Theatre, Speech, and Dance. During the summer of 2012, Taylor worked on an Upperclass Monroe Scholars Summer Research Project that combined his love of theatre with his interests in computer science by using his skills as a computer scientist to tackle a technical problem in stage lighting management. Upon graduation, Taylor headed to Durham, North Carolina as the head sound technician for the American Dance Festival.
