Hello, Pitt Honors community! My name is Nate McDowell, and I am a rising senior pursuing a major in Information Science and a minor in Economics. Outside of the classroom, I enjoy spending time in the outdoors. My favorite outdoor activity in the summer is whitewater kayaking. I hope to spend as much time as I can in Pennsylvania rivers this summer!

For the 2022 Community Research Fellowship, I am developing resources for the Pittsburgh Data Jam, a competition that centers around teams of high school students completing projects involving Big Data. My work this summer will provide materials that help these teams through the process of implementing Python and GitHub in their projects. My community sponsor for this project is the Pittsburgh DataWorks, an excellent local organization, and the host of the DataJam.  

I believe that you don’t know something until you can teach it to someone else. At just the beginning of my project, I have already found myself learning more about computing topics that I thought I knew. This work excites me because it will test my knowledge of the field I plan to enter.

This project will be different from research experiences I’ve had in the past because it is focused on implementing a tool into the real world. I hope that the work I complete this summer will be used by DataJam participants for years to come. The potential long-term impact of this project will push me to produce my best work.