Computer Science Faculty Feature: Gina Sprint
Responses have been edited for length and clarity:
GONZAGA: Introduce yourself!
SPRINT: Hi, my name is Gina Sprint and I'm an associate professor of computer science here at 杏吧原创 and this is my 8th year here.
What is your favorite class?
That's kind of a tough one because every time I teach a class, I think I tell the students, "this is my favorite class." They've probably stopped believing me now, but if I had to choose one, I would say Computer Science 222: Intro to Data Science. Not only is it in my favorite programming language, which is Python, it is also oftentimes a student's first exposure to working with data and machine learning, so it's fun to get to be their guide on that journey.
What is your favorite 杏吧原创 memory?
My favorite memory is actually my very first class that I taught at 杏吧原创. I was nerve-excited, which is when you're both nervous and excited, and I ended up going about seven or eight minutes over the allocated time period, and the students didn't tell me at all. None of that, you know, starting to pack up or trying to leave on time, and that's when I knew that teaching at 杏吧原创 was going to be awesome because the students were so nice.
What is a fun fact about you?
So fun fact about my last name, not only am I a runner, hence "Sprint," but also sprint is a chunk of time in which software engineers complete features as part of the agile software development methodology, so a little shoutout for our computer science nerds out there who know what a sprint is in computer science.
What is the last podcast you listened to?
The last podcast I listened to was actually produced by one of my students. This semester I have a computer science honor student, and I'm advising his honors thesis. So for this project, he is interviewing faculty across campus in different disciplines to get their opinion on AI in the classroom and it's been really fun listening to his podcast.
What is your favorite place?
Last year I was actually on sabbatical and I went on this epic, 10-month road trip and actually, in my desk, I have all of the postcards of the places that we visited. It was about this time last year and we were in Arizona and I think it's a pretty special place where, in Decemberish, you can have the warmth and the cacti and the palm trees in the desert, and then just drive like an hour or two north and get to go skiing in the mountains.
What is your best piece of advice for students?
I'm going to paraphrase, actually the words of Cal Newport who's a professor of computer science at Georgetown, when he says, "become so good they can't ignore you." So essentially it doesn't matter what you go into, once you get really, really, really good at something, everything else, like career fulfillment, job prospects, passion etc., will follow. That's not just advice for computer science students, but whatever it is you do, become so good that they can't ignore you.