Summer, 2015, Charleston, SC


I really had three expectations going into Boeing.

I wanted to have strong relations with people on my team. I wanted to be able to communicate with my team and have ongoing dialogue to make progress on our projects. I wanted to take ownership of challenging projects that will make real contributions to Boeing. I wanted to be able to experience the depth of an entire project cycle and produce tangible deliverables that I learn a lot from. Mentorship is quite important in a team environment. I worked best when I have an active mentor who wants me to learn, grow, and give back to the community.

I had communicated these three expectations to my recruiting focal and managers at my matching event very clearly. Finally, I got matched to the IT Asset Management and Order Fulfillment team.

Keeping that in mind, I moved forward into my very own project.

Although I can't say the specifics, I did take complete ownership of my project - the Master MSR Form. This cloud-based application handled internal asset requests within Boeing. I set up informational interviews, finished all Boeing trainings, and learned to use SharePoint Designer and InfoPath Designer in just two weeks. I finished my first iteration of the Master MSR Form by the end of the third week of the internship. After that, it was continuously iterating through testing and debugging from user feedback using Value Stream Mapping techniques. I was able to present a demo of the product by the middle of the internship, pitch to the team that would take this project on, and see the results happen. The team ended up using the Master MSR Form. From our efficiency projections, we estimated that using the Master MSR form increased efficiency (in terms of time) by 12%. 

Because of my involvement in the nonprofit, the Global Leadership Organization (GLO), I went on a trip to Taiwan in the middle of my internship to coach high school students in leadership management. Once I came back, my manager asked me to do a report-out on my experiences as a GLO Counselor in Taiwan. I gave my presentation, and the staff team loved it. They loved it so much that they asked me to presented in three separate meeting rooms for smaller groups. Then, my manager asked me to present at the All-Hands Managers Meeting. Instead, the event got changed so that I would present for the entire IT department in the building. I was ecstatic.

Since I finished my project a little early, I had time to take on another one. I became a Project Management intern part of the IT Innovation team. I coordinated virtual meetings with the third place Hack the Factory hackathon team to help them move forward to meet project deadlines, to create a Lean Canvas, and to pool in resources to help in the execution process. 

I had a ton of fun at my internship at Boeing, but I also had a ton of meetings. Just for fun, I put together a graph of how many meetings I had per week.

That's a lot of meetings scheduled on my Outlook Calendar! Aside from that, I had a summer full of memorable experiences. Let's take a walk down memory lane.

During the first week that I arrived, the team set up a luncheon and Jim-n-Nick's BBQ to welcome my arrival. It was such a great start to the internship!

A weekend later, I drove up to North Carolina to visit my friend Howard, who is a current medical student at Duke University. I met up Roger, my significant other, and we all went out with Howard's friends to Charlotte. We spent time going to the National White Waters Park, playing Exit Strategy, and having a hearty pancake meal. 

A couple of weeks later, I flew to Taiwan to coach high school students in leadership management for non-profits and other passion-driven leadership. I also got to visit my extended family and ate great food!

Later on in the internship, Boeing allowed interns to go on the DreamLifter and to finally take pictures! We're usually not allowed to take photos on the Boeing campus unless we have a photo permit, which is off-limits for interns. I was so excited to be able to share what I saw that day.

The HR team that managed the intern community put on a lot of baseball events. I don't particularly enjoy baseball events, so I didn't attend those. However, there was a social at the Basico, which seemed like a clubhouse with games, a pool, and good food. That was the night I got to meet a lot of other interns I don't normally meet. It also started an entire series of dinners and downtown hangouts that lasted until the end of my internship.

Because a coworker wanted to build the IT community to become more close-knit, he set up a payday social at the Southside 17 bar nearby. It was great to see IT members from all ages (21+) come together.

Yes, this was one of those downtown hangouts I was talking about!

At the end of July, I flew to Yale to celebrate my 2-year anniversary with Roger. I was delighted to see my GLO advisor, Michael, there! We all hung out together and had sushi and desserts. Roger was a sweetie and took to me a fancy dinner and bought a fancy dress for me! It was a relaxing weekend indeed.

Throughout the internship, my mentor, LaDonna, and I kept talking about how much we love noodles. We just had to find some ramen or pho. We found a nearby pho places and many of the team members took a lunch break together to get pho noodle soup! It was a first time experience for many people.

This was another downtown hangout!

And another one...

Natalie, one of the greatest coworkers anyone can have, hosted a pizza-making session at her beautiful home! It was such a lovely, chill event with the yummiest homemade pizza I've ever had.

Rachel, LaDonna, and I swore we'd go have some noodles again. We found this restaurant on Yelp that had really great ratings, but I'm just going to be honest, the restaurant did not meet my expectations. Next time though!

During my last weekend in Charleston, Natalie and Anjelica decided to take me out to experience Charleston's downtown night life. I didn't think there would be much going on, but downtown Charleston is amazing! I loved the vibe. It felt very safe, fun, and exciting! I'm not much of a bar person, but I had a fantastic time with Natalie and Anjelica. :) 

So at the end of the internship, I reflected upon my 3 months of work, fun, and new life experiences. Did my time meet my expectations? Well, I'd say yes!

I had a great team that cared about me and my future! There were so many times that my team members set up one-on-ones with me to ask me how my summer was going, whether they can help in any way, and what I think I want to do in the future.
There was no doubt that I had complete ownership in my project. It was my summer baby. I'm so thankful to have gone through an entire project cycle in its entirety. It felt very fulfilling.
My manager constantly introduced me to Leadership at Boeing. Because of those introductions, I was able to set up one-on-ones to ask for career advice and technical informational interviews to further my abilities in certain software platforms.
In the end, my summer internship had been an amazing experience that hit all three of my expectations!

Through these life experiences, there were three lessons I learned.

As for this last lesson, I thought it would be appropriate to make it more self-reflective. I asked other interns what their biggest take-away was for the summer, and the above was what they responded. I thought it was so great.

In the end, I realized that I put forth my 110% in everything I did this summer. The lesson above was actually from an anime I was watching, but I felt it was so relevant to how I approached my summer. 

Thank you for the great summer, Boeing!

I met the best suite mates in college - Kevin and Briton (and partner-in-crime, Abbie). Now, I'm off to the next stage of my life, so I decided to build this friendship photoset for Kevin and Briton to remember our golden era. We called ourselves: "The Suite Bros".

This project is actually an extension of the "Voice Activated Arduino (Bluetooth + Android) by ASCAS. I highly advise you guys to read his project first! ASCAS really simplified the fundamentals of the project down super well.

It's been a little more than a year since the last time (and the first time) I took Electronics at Pomona College and learned to use the Arduino. I thought ASCAS's project was fun and easy-to-learn. He has great project. Check him out when you can!

HOW PROJECT SUITE BROS WORKS

It's a DIY photoset that has LEDs inserted in the frame and in the back of photos that are activated by your voice commands via an Android's speech recognition app. The app is called "Android Meets Robots: Voice" by SimpleLabsIN. This app converts your voice commands to data strings and sends them to your Arduino via Bluetooth. You can build the photoset in any way you want. I just want to show you how I built mine in this Instructable.

PROJECT SUITE BROS VIDEO DEMO:

Click Here for the Instructables Post

Women in electronics! Me and my gorgeous electronics partner, Nicole Grimwood.

Growing up, I was somewhat technically inclined, but was never encouraged to go into Computer Science until college. Harvey Mudd's mission to encourage diversity in STEM and Scripps College's influence in pro-feminism urged me to jump towards the technical field and be part of the movement to close the gender gap and to enhance diversity in socio-cultural and economic background. I strongly believe that the absence of computer science in public school districts and the stigma of a males-only field contribute to this global insufficiency.

In middle school, I loved mathematics and the sciences, but I was mocked as the "little airheaded girl." Heated, I utilized the next few years to show that I was different, but not less.  I gave extra effort to eliminate the social misperceptions triggered by my gender and fragile appearance, aspiring to be living proof that great things did come in small packages. Now, one of my greatest regrets is not being introduced to computer science at an earlier age. Having been in underprivileged public schools until college, I can assure you that Computer Science was simply never a conversation topic. It was just not as accessible to people of lower socioeconomic status. Since Computer Science was not taught in schools, it was not important to families and students. While administrators were busy worrying about which teachers to lay off and how to alleviate high drop-out rates, students missed out on discovering their potentials in the technical field. One of those students was me.

In college, I realized my dreams in STEM fields and continued to explore technology, research, the arts, and leadership every day. As a representative of the 5C Women of the Association of Computing Machinery (W-ACM), I seek to improve visibility of the computer science world in my college community through publicity and event planning. My biggest project will be serving on the 5C Hack-a-Thon Planning Committee in the spring, aiming to increase student participation and closing the gender gap in the long run. As the past Circle K International Lieutenant Governor in my area, I have made close connections with the numerous youth groups in my community. Combining the mission to give back to the community with my passion for making Computer Science accessible for all, I hope to collaborate with neighboring service groups to push for STEM education in our local school districts.

Currently, I hope to work on this website to illustrate my journey in technology and engineering as a woman from an underprivileged socioeconomic status. Through story-telling and photography, I aspire to share my self-realizations and life-changing encounters.

I may only have my foot in the door, but I plan to never lose my hunger to learn more about computer science. Eventually, I would like to serve as an instructor or mentor for movements like Girls Who Code and Girls Start, empowering young girls to reverse the stigma of male domination in technology and engineering. 

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January, 2014
Chloe Shih

January, 2014
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With only two months of coding experience, I decided to sign up for the 5C Hack-a-Thon. Initially with no partners in the competition, I convinced my friends Jackie and Maureen to join. Jane, one of the Introductory Computer Science teaching assistants, was assigned to us as our final teammate. The Hack-a-Thon was a first for us all, so we were naturally placed in the beginners' division. We had 24 hours to come up with, program, and functionalize the best project we could. At first, we were eager and excited, but our limited programming knowledge kept us at the drawing board for the first two hours. My Introductory Computer Science course specialized in developing object-oriented programs and elementary algorithms, while my other three teammates' course specialized in graphical user interfaces to design games like Tetris, Pictionary, and Frogger . Together, we coded a GRE vocabulary speed game, dubbed "GRE Spree," in which definitions fall from the top to the bottom of the screen while players type in the corresponding words to eliminate these falling phrases. We also included a review option that displays the definition, a sentence example, and a relevant GIF (like those seen on Tumblr and Reddit) for each incorrect response.

My first Hack-a-Thon team: Me, Jackie, Maureen, Jane (from left to right)

Although GRE Spree is not particularly extravagant, it was the most sophisticated project I had worked on. Our team decided to pair program, where two programmers code at one computer. Jackie and Maureen handled "how it looks", while Jane and I designed "how it works". What was most probing was figuring out how to keep numerous rules running simultaneously. We timed definitions falling and disappearing, marked wins and losses, and tracked inputs from the player. These individual features were carried out by "methods", and having so many to keep up with resulted in bugs, or kinks, in our program. It was surprising how many features and variables we had to account for through techniques like inheritance, trees, and data structures. By about 6 AM the next morning, our team finally finished the game and made it to final presentations.

Grilled Cheese Truck at the Hack-a-Thon!

This was one of the main coding rooms with tons of snacks.

Besides coding with Jane, I worked as the planning master. With a marker and a whiteboard, I led the planning process and established a clear vision. At the final presentation, I had the privilege of presenting the team's final product. To be working on a project from beginning to end was truly rewarding and fulfilling. My most powerful realization was that our program started with a bunch of lines of code to a finished product that anyone can enjoy. Not only that, final presentations were unbelievable. Other groups designed 3D first-person games, Siri-like voice command programs, and hilarious mobile apps for dating. These remarkably genius and amusingly quirky students of computer science came up with priceless designs and ideas. I had so much fun that I am now on the 5C Hack-a-Thon Planning Committee for 2014 in hopes of sharing the Hack experience with the rest of the Claremont community. 

Made it to final presentations! Phew. Those 24 hours paid off.

For my last year, I challenged myself to take on the legendary CS5 course "Introduction to Computer Science" at Harvey Mudd taught by Professor Zachary Dodds. As part of Mudd's Common Core curriculum, CS5 is taught in Python and introduces computational techniques, theory, and societal and ethical issues. To me, Dodds was a character who overflowed a room with his enthusiastic charisma. I admired his hearty approach of entertaining demonstrations and hilarious references to "42", aliens, and Star Trek. He effectively taught design, implementation, and documentation with the element of wonder. Surely, it was his attitude that assuaged my fears and hooked me to the technical field. I jumped towards the Operations Research major in the 3-2 Combined Engineering Program with Columbia University, which required me to switch to an introductory course in Java. This course asked probing, non-trivial questions teaching creative problem-solving procedures and demonstrated efficient and brilliant algorithms. With each problem set, I learned more about technological innovations and realized how powerful computer science can be. My time with Python and Java had been pivotal. I personally came across the most witty and personable people who, in such a demanding field, have some of the best attitudes. These people taught me that process is more important than the end result and helped me internalize genuine work ethic and the values of collaboration.

In October, I had the privilege of attending my first Harvey Mudd Career Fair. I attended special Tech Talks to hear representatives speak about their companies' unique culture and projects. I could feel the emphasis on a productive and encouraging work environment to foster innovative values and engaging work dynamic. Quickly after, I joined the Women of the Association of Computing Machinery (W-ACM) to partake in thought-provoking dinner discussions of internship, interview, and culture experiences.

W-ACM convinced me to compete in my first Hack-a-Thon where I programmed a GRE vocabulary game in Java. With only two months of programming experience, I made the right decision to take the risk of putting myself through this 24-hour coding challenge. Before then, I participated in Hack Week, a computer science boot camp that took place before the tournament. The way that the Hack-a-Thon promoted collaboration, innovative creativity, and encouragement made me appreciate the competition. I continued on to volunteer as a Core Values Judge for the FIRST Lego League, a robotics tournament for youths, hosted at Harvey Mudd College. My role was to push for teamwork and creativity to girls and boys.

Through these experiences, I fell in love with how organizations and companies are making a movement to remove the stigma of the technical field as tedious and male-dominated. With strong leadership background and curiosity for technological innovations, I aspire to become a project or product manager working with passionate and talented individuals to dedicate our lives to not just great, but greater ideas.

Women, Pedagogy and Technology Talk at the Claremont Colleges

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January, 2014
Chloe Shih

The Schmitz Ecomorphology Lab at W.M. Keck Sciences, Claremont, CA
Funding by The Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Summer Research | 2013

Click here to download my poster at the 2013 Keck Science Department Poster Session in Claremont, CA

Weekly ice cream at Handel's Homemade Ice Cream & Yogurt

Most birds are day-active (diurnal), but some day-active birds are nested deeply phylogenetically within night-active groups (nocturnal). Evolutionary history suggests that these diurnal species evolved their diel activity patterns secondarily. My project explored the diverse bird clades Strigiformes (large birds of prey like owls) and eagles and hawks categorized into three ecology groups: diurnal, cathemeral/crespuscular and nocturnal. I primarily focused on how skeletal visual morphology evolves in secondarily diurnal birds. Specifically, do these secondarily diurnal birds feature…

·         Smaller eye sockets?

·         Smaller optical ratio?

·         Larger optic nerve foramen?

This summer, we compiled an extensive and detailed data set on bone structure of the birds (87 species, 141 individuals) from the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History and analyzed different functional parameters to explore if the evolution of morphology is closely coupled with the evolution of diel activity patterns (which were diurnal, cathemeral/crepuscular and nocturnal).

Participating members of the HHMI Poster Session at the W.M. Keck Sciences on July 18, 2013

By the end of the 10-week research program, our preliminary results showed that diurnal birds…

·         Do not have significantly smaller eye sockets

·         Have significantly reduced light sensitivity

·         Have some indication of larger optic nerve sizes.

               

At the end of the program, we made a trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. to gather measurements and photos from their ornithology collection, which is the largest in the nation. We also visited our collaborators from Beijing, China to collect data for dinosaur fossils with scleral rings. We met with Professor Jiang Dayong from Peking University and with Professor Xu Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and observed each institution's fossil collections of icthyosaurs, mixosaurs, chaohusaurus, microraptors, sauropods and much more.

Team EcoMorph with Team Peking Paleo with Prof. Schmitz and Prof. Jiang standing side by side.

Presentation at IVPP with world-renown paleontology Professor Xuxing and more!

So this is what I basically did owl..summer...long... (get it?)

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Now, I just want to talk a little about my trip to Beijing, China! Unfortunately, my camera lens got stuck and what resulted was a bunch of blurry photos. Yes, that was the sound of my a broken heart of a photographer. 

On the Sunday that we arrived, we were picked up by Professor Jiang himself to go to Peking University! I don't know about Lars or Patrick, but I definitely felt a little nervous to meet one of the most established researchers of paleontology in Beijing, China. The claim that Beijing is a large city is no joke. When we arrived at Peking University, we went into the university's hotel room for guests and study abroad students. It is at this hotel/dorm that our Pitzer students in the Beijing program stay at! It was pretty sweet to see what home they come back to every night. Although all of us were pretty jet-lagged, we had enough energy to have dinner at the hotel with Professor Jiang and his student researchers. I don't have a photo of that event because I was really nervous to take one, haha. 

The next day, on Monday, the three of us went to the geological museum of Peking University to observe a handful of beautiful geology and fossil specimens. 

This is Lars analyzing the pictured fossil specimen with Peking grad student Miranda and Lee.

For lunch, the grad students took us to the largest cafeteria on campus. It was probably the size of Harvey Mudd's dining hall but with a lot more people. Dishes were served individually. One basically would take a tray, grab any small plate of food, and pay at the end. The prices were extraordinarily cheap, and the food was more the delicious! 

Lars with his lunch! It seems like noodles with some pork meat.

As much as I love our dining halls, I wouldn't mind if I had this all the time, too.

After our meal, the grad students gave us a tour of the humongous campus. There are trees and bushes everywhere! It's not like the Claremont Colleges where you'll see buildings and some nicely planted trees. There literally are trees surrounding buildings, walkways, and roads. 

This is what I mean by trees.

My favorite place was the huge lake they have in the middle of the campus. I forget what the name is called, but people hang around the lake sitting on benches, taking photos, biking, or strolling. Especially when the sun is setting or rising, the glimmer on the lake looks so warm and relaxing. We roamed the around, checking out a boat in the lake made of concrete, lion statues at the gate, water lilies, and a tall red tower. 

People hanging out at the lake.

On the boat made of concrete.

A lion statue guarding the gates of the school.

Water lilies on campus!!!

That night, we went to have dinner with Professor Tang, Professor Wang, and Xiaomei to have Beijing duck. Professor Tang is actually a Keck professor and Professor Wang is a Harvey Mudd Professor! Xiaomei is the Pitzer College Study Abroad Director for Peking University. As it was only our second night in Beijing, the three of them helped us a lot with some toThe restaurant we went to seems really famous, and the decor seems so vibrant and cultural. This place probably is a tourist attraction though. 

All of us connected by one thing - the Claremont Colleges!

Our food!!!! I don't think we finished everything that night...

On Tuesday, Team EcoMorph (our lab team name) went to the geological museum and actually took measurements and photographs of certain specimens. We had the privilege of observing the specimens displayed in the museum as well as the other ones that were still being shelved and researched in the basement. We spent countless hours holding fossils of major history in our hands. I was really surprised when I saw some of Lars' research work displayed in the museum, too! I love how the paleontologists all over the world make sure to network with each other to discover the secrets of the beginning of time. 

Someone is excited!

Another cool aspect of this part of the trip was that the three grad students - Lee, Miranda, and Vanessa - were able to see how we, as researchers from California, worked our analyses. For the most part, Lars explained many features of fossils that may have implications of what happened to that particular specie to the three grad students. I served as a mini-translator between the grad students and Lars. My Chinese abilities were really challenged. 

Lars analyzing fossil specimens with Lee and Miranda.

At the end of the day, we decided to check out a tourist shopping plaza called Wang Fu Jing. There, people were selling live and fried scorpions on sticks, fans, necklaces, chopsticks, and just so much more. I always get pretty intimidated coming to places like these because one really has to know how to bargain. At the end of the night, Patrick and I settled on buying these really cool laser pointers.

Yes, they're live scorpions on sticks. And yes, that's a starfish.

The crowd at Wang Fu Jing!

That green light is from the laser pointer we bought! They seem really powerful.

We ended up buying dinner at the food court. Apparently, there is a meal card system where you load money onto a temporary card and you swipe at these food places. It was very difficult for me to figure that out....

After dinner, we traveled to see the Tiananmen Square. Even at night, there were still loads of people visiting the site and taking photos. The place is guarded with numerous security officers.

The famous picture of Mao Tse Dong!

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Spring, 2014
Chloe Shih