Grant frees young researcher with big ideas to study abroad
When Tina Zdawczyk was a student at La Cañada High School, plans for the future included attending college on a pre-med track in the hopes of someday becoming an OB/GYN.
It wasn’t until she was in her last year at USC, with a few internships under her belt, that the 2010 graduate began to question whether she was on the right path.
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“I’d shadowed enough doctors to figure out that’s not what I wanted to do with my life,” Zdawczyk said, recalling the realities of navigating a complex bureaucracy with too many patients and not enough time. “I wanted to get to know people in more depth.”
She thought back to happy summers spent at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, an educational program she’d attended as a student and worked at in her college years. She loved being in an environment that paired academic rigor with opportunities for social growth, and started brainstorming career paths that would let her help young people identify and pursue their individual passions.
Once she discovered the field of educational psychology, she was hooked. Now in her first year of graduate school at University of Minnesota, Zdawczyk is researching cognition and how computer science and programming build students’ computational thinking skills.
Late last month, she learned she’d been selected to receive a prestigious research fellowship offered by the National Science Foundation for graduate students working in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields.
Awarded to only 2,000 students nationwide, the fellowship covers three years of graduate school tuition and expenses, including studying abroad.
“I’m trying to figure out which country to go to, because I’m absolutely going,” said Zdawczyk, who graduated from USC with degrees in neuroscience and East Asian languages and cultures and worked in Indonesia and Japan in 2012.
Applying for the fellowship was a daunting process, so Zdawczyk enrolled in a class designed to help guide students through it. She worked closely with adviser and UMN education psychology Professor Keisha Varma to determine the nature of the research she’d be doing if she pulled off a win.
She hopes her research will shed light on how different computer programming languages affect the development of computational thinking — a way of solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior by drawing on the fundamentals of computer science — with an emphasis on female and minority students.
“It goes beyond teaching programming (and) provides kids with a different way to think about the world,” Varma said of Zdawczyk’s project. “She’s allowing herself to think broadly and think about big ideas, and will be doing it as part of this elite cohort of fellows.”
La Cañada High Associate Principal Jim Cartnal, a former teacher of Zdawczyk’s who’s kept in touch and wrote a character reference for her fellowship application, said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the former student’s win.
“I figured she was going to get it, to be honest, because she’s so extraordinary that anything she puts her mind to she pretty much accomplishes,” Cartnal said. “The sky’s the limit for her.”
As for Zdawczyk, the future is uncertain but looks bright now that she’s found her true passion.
“I have no idea what I plan on doing after this,” she said. “I just know this is what I like to do.”
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
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