Zachary W. Goldston

Since August 2021, I have been an Instructional Aide (IA) for a couple of Computer Science courses at the University of Michigan. I have taught EECS 445 (Machine Learning) in Fall 2021, and EECS 280 (Introductory Programming and Data Structures) in Winter 2022, Spring 2022, and Fall 2022. In this role, I am responsible for hosting my own lab/discussion to review course content, having office hours to assist with course assignments, responding to admin emails, developing new course material (primarily labs and discussion notes), and writing/grading exams. I have been able to improve my communicaton skills, teamwork, and mentorship through this role.

In Fall 2022, I am the President of the Michigan Gamma Chapter of TBP. In my role as President, I oversee the vision of the chapter, and lead both the Officer Corp and Advisory Board in making decisions to impact chapter functions. Additionally, I am responsible for running mailout, which is stuffing all the letters we send to eligible candidates. During my tenure, I oversee nearly 50 new members electing to our chapter, have attended our national convention, (earning a couple of awards) updated our bylaws and constitution to allow new graduate programs to be eligible, as well as modified financial policies to allow for better overseeing on our balance with the Association. (nationals) I have also managed to move money into our endowment fund, to ensure future cash solvency. Leadership, reconciliation, organization, and management are the most important skills I have developed in this role. For me, service is very imperative to being involved in a community, and this role enables me to give back to the CoE community, while building it up for future members/officers.

Previously, I was the Secretary during the 2021-2022 school year. As Secretary I represented our TBP Chapter at the national level and inform them about our election records, spending, and what events we host. I informed decisions about events and spending our local organization does. During my tenure, I completed reports within record time, sometimes even a month before the deadline. Through TBP, I am taught less about the technical side of things and instead focus on topics like ethics, communication, empathy, and cultural awareness.

I am a Senior Advisor Mentor, former Navigation Lead, for Michigan Mars Rover. In my role, I am responsible for overseeing the autonomus mission portion of the competition. I assist the leads and members on the subteam with designs, code reviews, and management. In my former role as Navigation Lead, MRover competed at the University Rover Challenge and the Canadian International Rover Challenge, where our team placed first overall for the competition, and had either the best or second best autonomous mission score. Some of the skills I have learned in these roles includes C/C++ Development, Python Development, Agile Workflow, team management, and multidisciplinary design.

Since August 2021, I have hosted sessions to help students through EECS 280. These sessions are meant as additional help outside of the assistance the course provides. There are two near-weekly sessions that occur back to back: One for course content/review, and another for project overview, where we provide tips and insight into implementation. We also get to provide additional 1 on 1 help at the end to reinforce concepts, and provide advisory tips for future courses.

During the summer of 2022, I worked with Capital One in their Chicago, Illinois office under their Card Tech division. I worked with 3 other interns to improve an internal API/Dataset system that reports on transactions in a given timeframe, as well as reporting them at both a client and endpoint level. I additionally attending corporate sessions on benefits of working at Capital One, different lines of business I could work in, DEI, and technical sessions on cybersecurity and AWS. At the end of the summer, we presented our project to appropriate clients and managers, and after that, visited the company headquarters in Mclean, Virginia. In this role, I developed and improved my full stack skills, and learned new technologies like Java Spring, NgRx, and Angular.