Adam is a 2020 Summer intern and worked on the dataMichiana Team. Adam is a student at the University of Notre Dame and will graduate in 2022 with a degree in computer science. Adam is from Latrobe Pennsylvania.
How did this experience affect your view and attachment to the South Bend/ Elkhart region? Living on a campus as luxurious as Notre Dame's, it’s easy to sometimes forget the issues and struggles that many people face outside the campus bubble. Working with the Center for Civic Innovation opened my eyes to the increasing number of evictions that minority groups within the city of South Bend are facing. My summer project on dataMichiana attempted to shine light on this subject collecting and cleaning data to put into visual graphics to make it easier for others to see and learn about this discrepancy among minority groups.
What was the most rewarding experience in the program? After completing our spatial map which correlated where evictions were most concentrated vs demographic information, we shared this map with leaders within the community. These leaders were extremely impressed with our graphics and told us it would make their jobs much easier, as it helped prove why their work is so important to people who are unaware of these issues within the city.
How did your experience in the program enhance your academic and professional goals? As a computer science major, working on the computer wasn't anything new. However, never did I think I would be working entirely on the computer. Going into a rigorous junior year of course work that was taught online was significantly less challenging after having a virtual internship.
In addition, there were many things that I learned during my internship that simply cannot be learned in a classroom. Our product had certain aspects that were needed and we had to tailor it to accommodate as many of the community leaders as possible. But not everything was given to us or available at all. Learning to manage and compromise between what the consumer needs and what is possible is a skill that will be extremely valuable throughout my entire professional career.