Not only was Brandt able to resolve a longstanding problem for the Career Center, her solution will support Cal State San Marcos students for years to come.

Brandt is a transfer student from MiraCosta Community College, majoring in computer science and graduating from CSUSM this spring. Brandt enjoyed her time at MiraCosta but felt she wasn’t very involved. So when she transferred to CSUSM, she knew she wanted to change that.

She served on the Orientation Team during her first semester at CSUSM, creating many new friends while welcoming new students to the campus community.

With hopes of continuing her involvement on campus, Brandt applied for a technology student assistant position with the Career Center. This position had been vacant for a long time but was brought back in hopes of fixing a data issue that had been building up.

Through the Career Center every CSUSM student is automatically enrolled with an account in Handshake, a network for posting and applying to jobs. However, when students graduate or leave, their accounts remain active on Handshake, showing the university had around 80,000 accounts last fall. With hopes of clearing out excess data from students no longer enrolled, the Career Center posted a job application looking for a student to assist with this problem, and Brandt checked every box.

Brandt had two previous internships that made her a desirable candidate for the position. She worked for Renesas Electronics, a semiconductor manufacturer, as an applications engineer coding for various radio frequency parts and with Northrop Grumman, the global aerospace and defense technology company, as a systems engineer coding for the RQ-4 Global Hawk, a remotely piloted surveillance aircraft.

So when asked if she could aid the Career Center with its data problem, the answer was a clear yes. In fact, Brandt actually suggested her own procedure for doing so.

Cullwell, the Career Center’s technology coordinator, had originally proposed a method for cleaning out the excess data on Handshake by manually going through each account to review whether the person was still enrolled as a student. However, Brandt explained that would take significant time and suggested her own method to fix the problem.

“On her first day, we discussed the broader goals of what we hoped to accomplish,” Cullwell said. “By the end of her second shift, she confidently proposed developing a script to automate the exact process we had envisioned. Over the course of the semester, she coordinated testing efforts, collaborated with IITS and Handshake liaisons, and refined the solution. Once deployed, her automation cleaned our data in a single afternoon.”

Cullwell was so impressed by Brandt’s ingenuity that she gave Brandt “The Departmental Wizard” nickname.

“She doesn’t have the same experience in programming that I do, so to her it seemed like magic, but for me, that’s just how my brain works,” Brandt said.

Not only did Brandt get to use her computing skills to help the Career Center, she also fulfilled her goal of becoming more involved on campus. During her time working for the Career Center, Brandt met so many friends, gained valuable skills for interviewing, and was encouraged and supported in applying for jobs.

Using resources from the Career Center, Brandt applied to 85 jobs over the past year in anticipation of graduation. The work paid off. Brandt will begin working full time after graduation for Trabus Technologies, a small business in San Diego that specializes in technology solutions for government and private sectors. Brandt will be working as a full stack software engineer for the company’s weather and boat transportation services.

Brandt’s time working for the Career Center not only propelled her into her first post-grad job, it made her time at CSUSM feel special.

“Sierra has made a lasting impact on the Career Center,” Cullwell said. “The systems she built will continue to benefit our team long after her time with us concludes.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

This award honors faculty and lecturers who have excelled in mentoring and guiding students in research or creative endeavors. It also recognizes those who have significantly increased the number and diversity of students involved in research. 

Kolosov has mentored 33 students, most belonging to groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Kolosov provides career-advancing opportunities to his students by offering co-authorship of publications and helping with conference presentations.  

He has two publications with student co-authors with nine more in review. Kolosov shows his dedication to mentoring students by participating in professional development opportunities.  

Majd has also put mentoring students at the forefront of her career since starting at CSUSM in 2014. She has mentored 40 students in research, 24 graduate students in their master’s theses and 14 undergraduate students. Majd’s mentored students were funded through Summer Scholars and the Learning Aligned Employment Program.  

Majd fosters diversity by mentoring first-generation, Hispanic and female students. Many of her students advance to graduate programs or secure competitive industry positions with Apple or Qualcomm. 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim assistant director of editorial and external affairs
ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

Tran was only 7 years old, and while his father and mother were busy navigating their new lives in a foreign land and his brother and sister were busy with teenage pursuits, he was often left alone to entertain himself. 

Tran did have a companion, however: a small laptop that his dad gave to him. He would spend hours exploring every nook and cranny of the device, and eventually many corners of the internet as well. With the help of his siblings, he began to use the computer to learn the bedeviling language of English.

It probably wasn’t a coincidence that, when Tran enrolled at Cal State San Marcos in 2021, he chose computer science as his major. Now he’s being recognized for excellence in the discipline.

Tran, a fourth-year student who’s on track to graduate in May 2025, was honored Tuesday as CSUSM’s recipient of the 2024 CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement, the California State University’s highest recognition of student accomplishment.

Students are selected based on academic achievements, financial need, excellence in community service and personal hardship. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college. 

The CSU recognizes 23 students every year – one from each campus – with the Trustees’ Award. Tran received his award in person during a ceremony as part of the CSU Board of Trustees meeting in Long Beach on Sept. 24

“I’m very surprised I won,” Tran said. “Maybe it’s my imposter syndrome that made me think perhaps I don’t deserve it. But I try to ignore that because I’ve worked very hard, put in a lot of hours and effort, to get to where I am.”

Tran has started his final year at CSUSM after a summer in which he participated in CSUSM’s venerable Summer Scholars Program. Under the guidance of software engineering professor Yongjie Zheng, he worked on an artificial intelligence-themed project titled “Empowering AI-Based Source Code Plagiarism Checking With Prompt Engineering.”

Zheng, who has served as Tran’s faculty mentor since January, was one of multiple CSUSM representatives to write a letter recommending him for the Trustees’ Award.

“From my interactions with Minh, I can tell that he is innovative, independent and open-minded,” Zheng said. “He has the potential to be a great student researcher. I’m particularly impressed by his strong and broad interest in many computer science topics, such as AI, cybersecurity and software reliability.”

The previous summer, in 2023, Tran was accepted into the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, which helps students gain research experience in any of the areas funded by the National Science Foundation. Spending nine weeks at the University of Nebraska Omaha, he completed a project that addressed the security of Internet of Things devices, then presented his results a few months later at a computer science conference in Washington.

Those trips marked the first and second times he had left California since settling here as an immigrant boy.

“I definitely enjoyed it,” Tran said of his time in Omaha with 10 other students from across the nation. “It was a new experience, making new friends, meeting new mentors and having fun memories.”

Besides professors like Zheng, Tran attributes much of his success at CSUSM to the TRIO Student Support Services program, and specifically to its director, Heather Northway. Tran began regular visits with Northway as a freshman, and he says she has helped him in numerous ways, from referring him to Student Health & Counseling Services when he was struggling mentally and emotionally, to recommending him for the REU program, to informing him of campus resources like Summer Scholars and the Faculty Mentoring Program.

“She’s one of the most wonderful people I’ve met,” he said. “She’s a big part of the reason why I’ve been able to make it to my senior year. I would have had a lot more trouble otherwise.”

Tran would like to apply his computer science degree to a career in AI or cybersecurity, though he’s not sure whether he first wants to pursue an advanced degree.

“I find these cutting-edge fields to be very intriguing,” Tran said, “and I’m excited to see what’s next.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

The programs of computer science, electrical engineering and software engineering recently learned that they have been accredited by ABET, which originally stood for the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology but has used just the acronym since 2005.

ABET, based in Baltimore, accredits college and university programs in the disciplines of applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree levels. It has accredited more than 4,500 programs at 920 colleges and universities in 42 countries.

“This validation that we have built programs worthy of ABET accreditation reinforces our commitment to student success and to preparing our students for high-demand fulfilling careers in our region,” said Jackie Trischman, dean of CSTEM. 

The accreditation is retroactive to CSUSM’s first graduating classes for software engineering and electrical engineering, and to the class of 2021 for computer science. 

Trischman said the application process took years, and included hiring of a consultant for one of the programs and hosting ABET officials for a three-day campus visit last fall.

ABET accreditation assures that programs meet standards to produce graduates who are ready to enter critical technical fields that are leading the way in innovation and emerging technologies, and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of the public. ABET reviews examine program curricula, faculty, facilities and institutional support, and are conducted by teams of highly skilled professionals from industry, academia and government, with expertise in the appropriate disciplines.

Many jobs with government-sponsored agencies and certain types of companies only hire students who graduated from ABET-accredited programs.

“This will help us to show our community that we have high-quality programs,” Trischman said. “It will help with recruitment and with securing positions for internships and jobs for our graduates.”

The accreditation process for CSUSM was led by Dr. Simon Fan for B.S. in Computer Science and B.S. in Software Engineering, and Dr. Reza Kamali for B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Ali Ahmadinia, then the chair of the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (where computer science and software engineering are offered), assisted in organizing the faculty for those programs and securing the necessary resources. Dr. Ricardo Fierro, former associate dean of CSTEM, did crucial coordination and administrative work along with Dana Edstrom, administrative coordinator; Courtney Dow, contract specialist in the College; and Jessica Faulkner, assistant to the dean.

Trischman emphasized, however, that it was a team effort involving students, staff, the faculty in each program, administration and industry partners.

This fall, CSUSM has almost 300 electrical engineering students, 170 software engineering students and more than 1,000 computer science students.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

Less than two years later, Do reconnected with Cal State San Marcos as a working alumnus, inspired by his experience to return the favor and help current students find their spark.

Do’s rapid evolution from student who benefited from mentorship to young professional who is providing it has been remarkable to witness for Youwen Ouyang, a computer science professor who took Do under her wing at CSUSM.

“Chris is so motivated as a mentor," Ouyang said. "He’s very proactive; he reaches out to me before I can reach out to him. I definitely see a leadership trait in him, and he cares so much about students.”

Do is a computer scientist at Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity (MCTSSA), a Camp Pendleton-based organization that provides technical support for command, control, computer, communications, cyber and intelligence (C5I) systems for the Marines. MCTSSA’s slogan is “make Marines more capable,” and their mission – in the simplest terms – is to ensure that whatever systems Marines use in the field function the way they’re intended to function.

Do was hired by MCTSSA in March 2021, only three months after he graduated from CSUSM. He got the job thanks largely to two internships he did with the agency in the summers of 2019 and 2020, but he probably wouldn’t have been exposed to those opportunities without his involvement in a CSUSM program called Fab Friday.

Fab Friday is one facet of a $1 million grant awarded to CSUSM by the National Science Foundation in 2017 to fund scholarships, workshops, mentors and networking opportunities for computer science majors from low-income families. Each Friday during the school year, students gather at on-campus makerspace – in this case, the Academic Success Center in the Extended Learning Building – to work on real-world projects while receiving mentorship from industry partners.

Do, for example, was a member of a team sponsored by Viasat that wrote software to be embedded in Slack, the company’s messaging tool, to improve the communication of its engineers.

“Fab Friday provided me not only experience, but it helped open new doors for me,” Do said. “Through programming, working with a team, collaborating and the camaraderie I developed during my time there, it really prepared me for my internship. Without Fab Friday, I would have been lost during the summer. It really propelled me to success.”

Do didn’t forget about that boost he received. In fact, only a few months after he started at MCTSSA, he reached out to Ouyang to ask if the group could serve as a sponsor for Fab Friday during the 2021-22 academic year.

Ouyang readily assented. Last fall, Do organized two hackathon challenges for teams of students to work on, and he arranged for a November field trip to the Camp Pendleton facility, where students got to tour the grounds and listen to a panel discussion by MCTSSA engineers. The same pattern continued in the spring, with the field trip occurring in May.

As part of the latter trip, CSUSM students presented at MCTSSA’s Think Tank Thursday, showcasing their work alongside other technical teams and current interns at Camp Pendleton.

“All these opportunities really went beyond what I originally designed for Fab Friday,” said Ouyang, who secured the NSF grant along with sociology professor Marisol Clark-Ibanez. “Chris is really taking it to the next level, because of his involvement, because he wanted to support our students and think about what would benefit them.”

From the seed planted by Do’s connection, two other CSUSM students have earned internships with MCTSSA. And though the five-year grant that produced Fab Friday has ended, Ouyang plans to continue the partnership with MCTSSA in the form of capstone projects within the computer science department.

Do never could have imagined this path when he arrived at CSUSM in 2016 as a biochemistry major who planned to pursue medicine as a career. But taking an elective computer science class as an underclassman and then being turned on to Fab Friday by a friend changed his course for the better.

“I wanted to be a doctor, and the main reason why is to help people,” Do said. “I changed my major, but I still have that urge. For me, life is fulfilling when I’m helping someone.”

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306