During the 2019-2020 school year, the Stir Scholarship committee awarded inaugural scholarships to three young women who will be pursuing college degrees in computer software. These women come from diverse backgrounds and life experiences. We asked them to tell us about themselves and are highlighting one person each week. We hope that reading their stories will inspire other young women to pursue software degrees and apply for the Stir Scholarship.
The third and final scholarship recipient we’re highlighting is Grace Dockery. Grace graduated from Olentangy Liberty High School and is now attending The Ohio State University. Here are some things Grace told Stir Scholarship President Cassandra Faris about herself.
Cassandra: How did you hear about this scholarship?
Grace: I went on a field trip with my STEM academy to Nationwide Arena and they told us about it.
Cassandra: What motivated you to study technology?
Grace: I’m motivated to study technology because I’ve seen my dad work with it since I was very young. It interested me and I’ve been dabbling in it for many years.
Cassandra: Why do you enjoy programming?
Grace: I enjoy programming because it’s like a puzzle that you are trying to solve; but it has many different solutions and ways to get to the desired product.
Cassandra: What are your favorite extracurriculars and hobbies?
Grace: My favorite extracurricular is dancing. I’ve been a dancer for 12 years. For fun, I like to go to different parks in Ohio to go exploring and hiking. I also enjoy fishing and volunteering at the Columbus Zoo.
Each scholarship applicant wrote an essay about how they plan to change the world with technology. In her essay, Grace talked about bringing new technology into crime scene investigations.
“Crime shows on TV show crimes being solved very quickly however in real life this is not the case…. I would like to create programs to speed up the process and allow CSI workers to obtain information almost as fast as you see it on television. I believe a program could be created that would allow fingerprints to be run within a couple of minutes by using complex code that looked for very detailed patterns in the prints. There should also be a program created that would act as an almost worldwide database for all things crime.”
Grace also told us her vision for how technology could change the cosmetics industry. She would like to make it easier for people to find cosmetics by creating a program that has information on cosmetic brands and products. The user would go into the application and enter information about their hair color, skin type, eye color, and other data and receive product recommendations based on that data. She envisions this program also having a virtual mirror feature so people could try cosmetics before buying them. She told the committee that she thinks this type of program “would help more girls get into science because they would see the science behind makeup creation. This might push them into STEM careers in the future”.
Grace ties these two things together by saying that they both help people which is something she ultimately believes technology could do. We look forward to learning what other creative software programs Grace dreams up!
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