Sara Owens
Tennessee Tech University sophomore Sara Owens of Brentwood, Tenn., first discovered her love of computer science during middle school. Her passion ignited when she attended her school’s Coding Club and only grew stronger as she progressed into high school and took every computer science-related course she could.
“I just fell in love with the idea that you could create something out of nothing," she said.
When it came time to choose where to further her education, Owens narrowed her choices down to two universities, ultimately choosing to become a Golden Eagle.
"Tennessee Tech was a much smaller college and so it meant the professors were going to be more able to have one-on-one conversations with us and I was able to make relationships with the professors a lot easier," she said. “Tech also has a career readiness program that helps students develop skills and competencies needed for interviewing for jobs. That has been really beneficial.”
Owens has even been able to start working on her own research as an undergrad. Her focus is on Python program verification.
“You can think about it like how you run a car through a series of tests to see if it crashes or passes. We do a very similar thing with code,” she explained. “However, there are holes in that verification process that can be very detrimental. There are many documented cases of code going wrong because it wasn't fully tested. What I'm working on is a virtual verification assistant, that the computer will write the proofs for you and go through your code and see if it's correct.”
Owens has gotten the chance to go to the National Collegiate Honors Conference in Chicago and present her research. She credits her academic relationship with Gerald Gannod, chair and professor of computer science at Tech, with helping her start her project and progress in her work.
"He's just been an incredible help in advising me and getting me on the master’s fast track,” she said. "And just whenever I have a question, I'll pop into his office and he's always happy to answer it."
In addition to her academics and research, Owens keeps busy with extracurricular activities like the university orchestra where she plays the viola, speech and debate, and computer science clubs.
“The Association for Computing Machinery is the largest computing club or fraternity in the United States. Even outside of college, once you have an active ACM membership, you will continue to make connections with people and employers,” she said.
Once she graduates with her bachelor’s, Owens plans to get her master’s and set herself up for a career that helps others as well as brings her fulfillment.
“My end goal is to build something that helps people, whether that is helping a nurse do their job more efficiently, to be able to keep track of patients and what's going on with them. Or maybe for a company that needs to keep track of the income of their clients. I just want to build something that helps people do their jobs more efficiently and takes a little bit of the tedium out of it.”
Throughout her Tennessee Tech experience so far, her passion for computer science has only continued to grow. For other students considering the major, she emphasized reaching out and getting involved.
“Don’t be afraid to ask a question because the people and mentors who really care about you, the really good ones are going to answer that question or find an answer for you,” Owens said. “The worst they can say is no. And the best they can say is yes. So go for it.”