Below are spring’23 CS graduation commencement speeches made by Cady Baltz, BS in CS, and Sukanya Baichwal, MS in CS.
Below is Cady Baltz speech.
Hello everyone! I am so honored to be a part of this day as we celebrate the Class of 2023. I also would like to extend a warm welcome to all of the family, friends, faculty and staff here whose support has made this journey possible for all of us.
Recently, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) student chapter at The University of Texas at Dallas (ACM UTD) was recognized as the top ACM chapter for school service in 2023 and was awarded the 2022-2023 ACM Student Chapter Excellence Award for “Outstanding School Service.” Out of approximately 700 ACM student chapters worldwide, ACM UTD was selected by a panel of ACM judges for its four semester-long programs hosted each semester at UTD: ACM Projects, ACM Research, ACM Technical Interview Prep and ACM Mentor Program. These programs engage over 300 UT Dallas students each semester and give students relevant experience in software development, research, college and career mentorship, and technical interview practice.
A team of UT Dallas students placed fourth in the U.S. in the 2022 National Security Agency (NSA) Codebreaker Challenge, which tasked college students with solving a fictional ransomware attack.
The Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), in conjunction with the Technical Committee of System and Software Assurance of the IEEE Reliability Society (RS) and the RS Dallas Chapter, organized a very successful International Contest on Software Testing on April 8, 2023. The contest was held in a hybrid mode where contestants in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area participated in person, and those from other geographic regions such as India, Brazil, China, Malaysia, and Austria joined online. There were more than 200 students from six different countries who registered/attended the contest. The following figures show the contest on the campus of UT Dallas.
Graduation represents the culmination of a journey and the attainment of a goal. UT Dallas celebrated graduation this fall with each of the University’s schools hosting their own ceremonies — 12 total, plus a doctoral hooding ceremony presided over by their respective deans. The graduation ceremonies were held on The University of Texas at Dallas campus on December 16, 19, and 20. Approximately 2,974 students participated in commencement ceremonies, including some who earned their degrees over the summer. All told, the University certified and awarded 1,903 bachelor’s degrees and 990 master’s degrees, in addition to 81 doctoral degrees.
For the third consecutive year, The University of Texas at Dallas has been recognized as one of the nation’s “Best of the Best” colleges and universities for LGBTQ+ students. UT Dallas was one of only two universities in the Southwest and 40 in the U.S. to make Campus Pride’s 2022 Best of the Best list. UTD earned five out of five stars on the Campus Pride Index, a benchmarking tool measuring LGBTQ-friendly policies, programs and practices, for the fourth consecutive year.
This fall, the National Security Agency kicked off its 2022 NSA Codebreaker Challenge, which allows participants to sharpen their technical skills through mission-centric scenarios similar to the type of work the NSA does every day. Students are challenged to use their technical expertise, intuition, and common sense throughout the competition. Any student nationwide can join in on the competition at any time. The UT Dallas CS Team placed fourth overall. Last year, the UT Dallas Computer Science team placed eighth. The team is led by Dr. Kangkook Jee, assistant professor of computer science at UT Dallas; graduate student Josh Wiedemeier and David Wank, a computer science student and Computer Security Group (CSG) officer.
HackUTD Hosts its Largest Hackathon A hackathon is a hub for out-of-the-box thinking that fosters divergent creativity, ranging from extending the reach of existing solutions to discovering all-new solutions. People may see different problems or see the same problem from different angles, and when put together in teams, they collectively pool their roles and skill […]
UTD CS Students Mental Health App Aims to Help Via UT Dallas Mercury News — A mental health text line will be available through the UTD app for students to get emotional support from peers. Kavya Kannan, a neuroscience sophomore and creator of the helpline, collaborated with several campus departments, including OIT, the Wellness Center, and […]
Students Accelerate Engineering, Tech Skills at Toyota Hackathon Seven University of Texas at Dallas students earned spots to compete alongside Toyota software and hardware engineers from all over the world at the SWARM Connected Mobility Hackathon, held this summer at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Plano. Toyota invited six students to participate in the 36-hour […]