CSC News

Congratulations Fall 2022 CSC Graduates!

The Computer Science Department at NC State is thrilled to offer congratulations to the more than 300 graduates who were honored during the Department’s Fall 2022 Diploma Ceremony on December 16^th in Reynolds Coliseum.  Hundreds of friends and family members gathered to celebrate the graduating class which included 21 Ph.D., 186 M.S., and 104 B.S. degree recipients.

The graduating class included two Benjamin Franklin Scholars:  Samanta Paola Ferrero Alcerreca and Quentin Victor Sieredzki; six Computer Science Honors Program participants:  Claire Elise Davis, Zachary M. Groseclose, Ankith Gopal Krishna, Zehao Li, Neal Jayesh Patel, and Quentin Victor Sieredzki; one CyberCorps Scholarship for Service participant:  Amir Lawrence; two University Honors Program participants:  Caroline Grace Gillison and Nicole Elizabeth Worth; four University Scholars Program participants:  Allison Dee Church, Claire Elise Davis, Chirag Jagdish Guntal, and Zizhen Li; and numerous members of a variety of scholastic honor societies.

Computer science Strategic Advisory Board member Lance Berberian provided the keynote address. Berberian is the Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Technology Officer of Labcorp.

In his remarks, Berberian began by defining commencement for the graduates saying that rather than being seen as the end of something, these commencement exercises should be viewed as their beginning, start, or launch.  “This isn’t the end of all of your hard work toward your degree.  You’re not at the finish line. They are about to fire the starting pistol of a new race that is a new part of your life!”  

He went on to offer five things for the graduates to think about:

1.  Let passion guide your career.  He said, “Anybody who is passionate, is working hard, and it doesn’t feel that hard because you are doing something you love…I believe if you focus on your passion, you’ll love your job so much more, and you’ll work hard at it and it does not feel like hard work.”
2. Remember that people matter.  He added, “Your coworkers will matter. Your manager will matter. Your family will matter.  People will matter, and they should matter in your life… I think about all of the partnerships I’ve had in my career – friendships, partnerships, people who have helped me, people I have helped – it is so important that I ask you to think about how important is that coworker, manager, employee, customer, family member!”
3. Think about your “LQ” – your learning quotient.  Berberian cautioned the graduates, “Everything you know right now will matter much less in technology in ten years. So, you have to constantly be learning.  You have to be a sponge.  You have to learn, learn, learn – never stop!  Learn about technology, learn about leadership, learn about communication, but always be learning and growing in your job.  This isn’t the end of your education.  It’s an important weigh station along the path.  You need to continue to learn as you grow your career.”
4. Personalize your work-life balance.  He said, “Not everyone wants the same work-life balance.  Don’t do what somebody else tells you to do. Do what you are excited to do...  At different times in your career you might think about work-life balance differently… You may really want to work like crazy your whole life.  You may want to work within a different balanced way, but don’t let anybody impose it on you. You decide.  Personalize it.”
5. Treat risk as an asset. Berberian said, “Most people try to avoid all risk, but the reality of your career is that if you accept a level of wise risk – don’t put a patient’s health at risk; don’t do something that is going to harm people – but if you have to make a bet on yourself, sometimes it’s wise to make that bet on yourself.”

In closing, Berberian again congratulated the graduates, and told them, “Please know that you did more than earn a computer science degree, you earned an NC State computer science degree, and I will tell you as a person who has some credibility, leading a team of 5,000 computer people – engineers – that that means a lot to me, and it means a lot to people like me. NC State is a fantastic institution to get your degree from, in computer science, so congratulations!”

Our special thanks go to the Computer Science Department ePartners Program, its participating corporate sponsors, and the NC State Engineering Foundation for their generous sponsorship of this ceremony.

Congratulations to all of our Fall 2022 Computer Science graduates!  The ceremony can be in its entirety here.

~coates~