Sam Platt

Why did you decide to study Computer Science at SOU?

I attended a STEM focused high school in the Portland, Oregon area where I quickly fell in love with Computer Science through my classes. From the moment I wrote my first line of HTML code in my freshman year, I was hooked. I knew early on that Computer Science was what I wanted to study; I just didn’t know where I wanted to study it. My high school was very small, so the sizes of Oregon’s larger state schools were intimidating. These smaller class sizes meant that I had a lot of the same classmates and teachers each year, which allowed us all to have a closer community and for students to get more personalized feedback. I knew I wanted to pick a university that had the same close-knit culture, and Southern Oregon University felt like a great match.

Another factor that led me to choose Southern Oregon University was complementary academic programs like EMDA (Emerging Media & Digital Arts), which I ended up minoring in. Seeing the presence of other academic programs related to technology was a strong signal that there was interest in computers throughout the university. Beyond that, I also had a special connection to SOU’s EMDA department. When my uncle Bart Platt (class of ‘00) went to school here, Southern Oregon University was called Southern Oregon State College, but we still had a lot of similar experiences. Bart graduated with a degree in Art (with an emphasis in Computer Graphics) and minored in Applied Multimedia (the predecessor to EMDA). I even ended up taking EMDA classes with Professor Miles Inada, whose classes my uncle also took when he attended.

What did you like most about your time at SOU?

I really enjoyed the feeling of community and camaraderie throughout the Computer Science department. During the early days of COVID-19 pandemic, a classmate created a Discord server for SOU CS students so that we could still have the feeling of studying together. I have fond memories of several of us working late into the night, brainstorming solutions, and laughing together along the way. We created running jokes that we still reference today.

Another benefit of the small class sizes was that each of my professors knew who I was and were eager to help us all succeed. There were so many times where I went to their office hours for help with various side projects I was working on, and they were always happy to answer my questions and point me in the direction of tools I could use.

The environment at SOU always made me feel valued and like I belonged. In my senior year of high school I was the only student of an underrepresented gender in any of my computer science classes, but at SOU I was no longer alone. It was always a great feeling to walk into my classes and know that I wasn’t the sole representation. Additionally, having multiple talented Computer Science professors who are women was very encouraging whenever I felt imposter syndrome.

The Computer Science professors tailor their coursework to be relevant to the industry, with some recent additions being Cloud Computing and AI Engineering. I enjoyed every course I took, but my favorites were Cloud Computing, Web Security, Programming Languages, and Advanced Databases. I might be a bit biased (I now work in web development), but I felt like those courses really opened my eyes to how web development overlaps with adjacent areas of Computer Science.

How has your time as SOU prepared you for a career in Computer Science? / Tell us a little about your career path.

In the middle of my freshman year the pandemic struck. With nothing else to do during spring break, I had no reason not to participate in the newly virtual SOU Computer Science Club Hackathon. A few months later I received an email inviting me to apply for an internship at Shasta Networks, a local healthcare IT company which had co-organized the hackathon. To prepare for interviews, I met with a professor over Zoom. Her advice was to communicate my thinking process and how I approach solving a problem. That advice has continued to help me to this day. I got the internship, and I worked there as a Software Support Intern until I started my capstone project. My time at Shasta Networks gave me early exposure to software engineering outside of the classroom, which helped to prepare me for later courses and my capstone project. Working in the healthcare IT industry also taught me a lot about data privacy and HIPAA, which paired well with the cybersecurity classes I was taking at SOU.

During my sophomore year, I was part of a team of four SOU Computer Science students who won 1st place in the 48 hour statewide HackOR Hackathon, which remains one of my proudest moments. I remember the initial disbelief when we found out we’d won, followed by cheers of celebration. We didn’t know it yet, but this experience would teach us important skills like teamwork, planning, deadlines, and problem solving.

At the beginning of my junior year, I resurrected the Computer Science Club, which had gone dormant during the pandemic. Over a period of two years, we held two Hackathon competitions, two Computer Science movie nights, five guest speaker events, five LAN parties, more than a dozen smaller events, and once took a group of students to the Oregon Cyber Resilience Summit. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about planning, leadership, collaboration, and communication. These soft skills were one of the most important things I learned at SOU.

Another way that I developed soft skills was by working as the Lead Computer Science Tutor during my junior and senior years. Tutoring was a great way to cement my own technical knowledge and to learn how to communicate technical concepts. My favorite part was the “Eureka!” moments when concepts clicked for students.

I ended up doing my capstone project during my junior year. My group’s project was “Conversational Transcription 2.0”, an audio transcription application built for the SOU IT department. It was an expansion of a previous project, so we added new functionality like in-app recording and support for multitrack recording. Learning how to modify an existing codebase, research solutions, and work in a team helped to prepare me for my career after graduation.

During the course of my junior year I was actively applying for internships. In the Cloud Computing course I was taking at the time, I learned about Docker containers. I decided to apply for some of their engineering internships, and was hired as a Software Engineer Intern for the summer. The technical skills I learned from my SOU classes were directly applicable to my internship role. Beyond Docker containers, I also had experience with Go, JavaScript, and React.js from my classes and capstone project.

When I returned for my senior year at SOU, I’d finished my Computer Science major, but I still had some unmet requirements for my EMDA minor, Cybersecurity certificate, and general education. I planned my remaining courses around trying to strengthen my skills in other areas, like cybersecurity and UX design.

After graduation I returned to Docker, this time as a full time Software Engineer. I do front-end web development, which feels like coming full circle given that my journey into Computer Science started with HTML. The skills I’ve gained from my time as an SOU student have been absolutely vital, and not a single daygoes by where I don’t use something that I learned at SOU. Most of all, I’ve found that having strong soft skills makes it a lot easier to develop stronger technical skills. After all, it’s a lot easier to get help with something when you can explain what you need help with!