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Virginia Tech partners on graduate program
ANNA GROSSNICKLE Staff Writer
UMW has partnered with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering for a program that gives students the opportunity to earn credits towards a master’s of engineering in computer science from Virginia Tech while they are still undergraduate students at UMW.
“This program allows the students to take courses at Mary Washington—special, very specific courses,” said Keith Mellinger, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “If they get certain grades in it as courses, then Virginia Tech actually counts them as part of their requirements for their Master’s program.”
Mellinger compared the program to taking Advanced Placement classes in high school.
“It’s the same kind of thing, with these partnership programs—we try to give you an opportunity to take the class at Mary Washington,” he said. “But then that class, for whatever reason, counts towards graduate school. But then we’re also counting that as an undergraduate class here as well. You’re sort of double dipping—that’s the idea.”
According to Betsy Lewis, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the program is popular among the computer science majors at UMW.
“I have been really impressed with the number of students who have been interested in it and the quality of the students who have been interested in it,” said Lewis. “They are some of our best computer science majors and grads.”
The program is mainly directed at computer science majors, but students from other majors are eligible to apply. These credits can be earned in specific computer science courses, including CPSC 110, 220, 240 and 340.
“I do not plan on attending a grad program for computer science, but had I known about this opportunity I would’ve considered the option at greater lengths,” said Olivia Breda, a studio art major and computer science minor. “I’m a computer science minor and not a major so I don’t have the necessary credit requirement, but hearing about the program made me regret not being a major.”
According to the U.S. News and World Report graduate school rankings, Virginia Tech is ranked 38 in the country among computer science programs.
“It’s Virginia Tech. If you want to get a Master’s of engineering in computer science in the state of Virginia, that’s one of the best,” said Lewis. “So I think it’s a way for these students—they’ve gotten their small school, liberal arts school experience, and all the great things that Mary Washington has to offer to them; they’re undergraduate, and yet they can still have these credentials for their Master’s degree from a really well-known and recognized institution. It just seems like the best of both worlds.”
UMW and Virginia Tech are working together to make the application process easier and more accessible for the students.
“Students ideally apply to the program during their junior year, but often students don’t begin thinking about their next steps until their senior year,” said Karen Anewalt, chair of the computer science department at UMW. “This can reduce their ability to complete courses that will count toward the accelerated degree. We are currently working with Virginia Tech to address this challenge and to potentially increase the pathways through which UMW students can gain admission for graduate studies at Virginia Tech.”
Representatives from Virginia Tech have hosted various outreach events in order to get UMW students engaged and interested in the program.
According to Anewalt, they host webinars each semester to provide information about the program. They also visit campus and host drop-in hours for students for a couple of days.
“The representatives see a steady stream of interested students during these dates and often visit eight to ten classes to publicize the program,” said Anewalt. “Virginia Tech enrollment specialists visit UMW multiple times per year to build relationships with faculty, speak to our courses, meet with students just beginning to explore graduate school options, guide students who are in the process of applying to the program, and check in with students who have already been accepted. This personal touch means a lot to our students.”
Though UMW has other partnerships with universities across the state, Mellinger said the UMW-Virginia Tech partnership is one of the most popular.
“The students love it,” said Mellinger. “It’s very popular. By contrast, we have partnership agreements with a law school. We have a partnership agreement with another engineering program. We have a partnership with a pharmacy school. And we get very little interest in those. Not a lot of students are interested in those things. But this one picked up right away.”
Despite the program being relatively new, there have already been UMW students who have gone on to begin their master’s degree at Virginia Tech because of this program.
“It is still a pretty new program,” said Lewis. “But I think that the students are already showing success at Tech, after they graduate. In fact, I’ve gotten some feedback from Virginia Tech about how well our students are doing.”
EMILY HEMPHILL Sports Editor
As the rest of the country woke up to “Happy Valentine’s Day” and “I love you” texts on Feb. 14, the family and friends of Michigan State University students were hoping to receive any text at all.
On the evening of Feb. 13, a 43-year-old man stepped onto the campus in East Lansing, Mich., and took the lives of three college students, critically injuring five more and forever changing countless others.
This was the 67th mass shooting in 2023, which means that there have now been more mass shootings in the United States than there have been days in the year so far.
As the frequency of these shootings increases, so does my numbness to the horror. So, I can’t exactly pinpoint why this particular tragedy specifically broke a piece of me. I have no connection to the university or the state of Michigan. But something in me could not let it pass by unaddressed.
Maybe I’m becoming more sensitive as my little sister is wrapping up her high school career and entering the final stages of her college search. Now, I’m decidedly moving gun safety higher up on her pros and cons list. Or maybe it’s because I grew up 15 minutes from Virginia Tech and any college shooting takes me back to April 16, 2011: the day I spent in lockdown in my first grade classroom as a gunman went on a killing spree, leaving 32 dead. Either way, I couldn’t stop the tears from falling as I sat on my couch Tuesday morning, continually refreshing the New York Times live updates of the situation.
The stories began to roll in. Students in a night class on Cuban history huddled on the floor trying to reassure one another, while others smashed a window helping their classmates escape as gunpowder and bullets filled the back of the room. One student used his shirt in an attempt to slow the bleeding from his classmate’s arm.
Over and over again, the headlines will play across our screens. Year after year, we will pause, express our condolences, anger, frustration and pain at this senseless bloodshed, and then continue on to heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and candlelit dinners. I cannot fault this behavior; I have been guilty of doing the same in the past as these atrocities become more and more commonplace. Though these shootings are obviously not isolated to February, the communal loss and despair accentuated by interviews, comments and other testimonies from those grieving hits even harder as we take time to appreciate our loved ones.
But what about the three Michigan State students? The three University of Virginia football players? The five killed in a Tulsa, Okla. hospital? The six gunned down in a Sacramento street? The 19 children and two teachers murdered in Uvalde, Texas? What about the 20,138 lives that were taken by gun violence in 2022, according to lence awareness post on our Instagram stories? I cannot and will not pretend to have the answers. But as we dedicate a day to love this week, I have to wonder if there is a greater meaning we should extract from this holiday. That when the next massacre occurs—and it is only a matter of time—instead of letting the numbness spread, we stop to truly acknowledge and mourn the tragedy and pain. We let it hurt and soften the calluses we have formed around our hearts, so that we can foster deeper connections rooted in genuine care and love for the basic dignity of human life. So that we have something left inside of us—and uniting us—to fight the path of hopelessness and nihilism we are rapidly heading down.
The Trace? It definitely cannot be overlooked that Tuesday marked the fifth anniversary of the Parkland, Flor. massacre that resulted in the deaths of 14 high school students and three faculty members. Their lives and deaths should not be in vain. They cannot be ignored.
I do not expect a couple hundred words from a college journalist to be the catalyst of a social movement—especially not one large enough to result in meaningful political action, finally bringing an end to the tidal wave of carnage that has flooded our schools, grocery stores, nightclubs, churches and movie theaters. But I also cannot continue to wait for that change to come from our city councils, state capitals or federal government. Those in D.C. that we elected to office with the purpose of protecting and serving have continually decided to deny us the right to life.
In the words of the Parkland shooting survivor X Gonzalez, “We are speaking up for those who don’t have anyone listening to them, for those who can’t talk about it just yet, and for those who will never speak again. We are grieving, we are furious, and we are using our words fiercely and desperately because that’s the only thing standing between us and this happening again.”
So what can we do as students at UMW? Do we sign our name onto yet another petition? March in another rally down Pennsylvania Avenue? Put another gun vio-
I do not mean for this to come across as an idealistic appeal that love is the panacea for our nation’s sins and calamities. Rather, it is an attempt to ward off the impending apathy as a graduating senior about to make my way in our society and world.
As Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a press conference Tuesday morning on Michigan State’s campus, “We cannot keep living like this.”
No, we can’t. But we are. And we will. Unless we resist the normalization of this appalling loss of life. Unless we begin to place compassion and respect for humanity over political agendas, partisan lines and the countless other divides that hold our country hostage. Unless we strive to become stars to guide one another through the darkness of this night.
