Name: Hemlata Sharma
Class Year: 2022
Major: Mathematics
Hometown: Mathura, India
Internship Organization: ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥
Job Title: LITS Intern
What’s happening at your internship?
For the summer of 2020, I am interning with LITS (Library & Information Technology Services) at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥. I am assigned to work on the FactBook Project with one of my other teammates. The project includes working on the data of ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ from the past. We were given online copies of the previous factbooks scanned and saved in different versions. We had to organize and catalog the files according to their years. We had to organize and clean up the folders by removing the duplicates. Also, we have been working on a readme document in order to record everything we have done on the data. It will help the future interns who would be taking over this project to understand and carry it forward.
Currently, we are halfway with the duration of the internship so me and my teammate have started with our own research proposals. For my research, I am focusing on the participation of ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ students in two major STEM fields, Mathematics and Computer Science. I plan to observe the patterns of ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥ students’ participation in Mathematics and Computer Science over time. Unfortunately, we do not have the data of the years before 1983, so I would be only focusing on the time period of 1983 and onwards. I hope to produce some meaningful results which can be helpful for the students of ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥, especially first-year students, in planning their major coursework and the departments of Mathematics and Computer Science.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I am a rising junior at ÷ÈÓ°Ö±²¥. I am a Mathematics major and I plan to pursue my career in the field of data science. For this summer, I was planning to get an internship which could help me get an experience working with data. Also, my friend interned with LITS previously and she had a good experience which encouraged me to apply for a LITS internship. Fortunately, I got assigned to a project which includes working with data.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
My favorite part of my internship is the flexibility given to the interns to plan next steps with a guidance. We are given the freedom to do the task the way we want to. This flexibility has allowed me explore and gain confidence in learning new skills on my own.
What is most rewarding about your internship?
The most rewarding thing in my internship is the freedom to take the project in whichever direction we want to take it individually. Though we are working in teams, we are not bound to do the same thing. Our research is driven by our own individual interests.
Visit the Summer 2020 Internships page to read more student stories.