Degree Spotlight: Computer Science with Ruben

okay hi everyone we are live i am here with our computer science student reuben hi reuben how are you hi i'm doing very well thank you ruben where are you located so i live in texas that's where i live i live in houston texas that's the area where i'm from okay beautiful i've never been to texas thank you ruben where are you located uh oh so i live in texas and we're hearing a little bit of an echo that's yeah i heard the echo too okay i think we fixed it i fixed it okay sorry about that everyone so hi everyone nice to see you thank you so much for joining us um like i said it's a pleasure to be here with reuben our computer science student we're just going to talk a little bit about the computer science program um reuben can answer any questions you may have but i wanted to say that i hope everyone had a great experience with your exams and everything went well and i'd love to hear from you guys uh how your exams went why don't our students let us know um you know what you're studying and our applicants let us know where you're from so we can differentiate the two and i see a lot of people are signing on that's really exciting thank you guys so much for tuning in um and we already have a question from nadine who's been on this before nadine asks how far are you into the program i'm i'm pretty like six months in that's how much i'm into the program so so how is it going so far so far it's going very well i think like the the most interesting thing about university of the people is that they really guide you through the process so i really like how it's been brought up also it's all about the the portions we cover even though they may be small you can see towards the end of the exam like when you're going to get to the final exam how much it's helped you during that way have you actually learned so yeah so there's a lot of there's a lot of opportunities for reflection exactly okay well i'm just curious who else i see that um that ken is from brazil and he's interested in computer science so hi ken feel free to ask reuben some questions i'm just curious who out there is studying uh computer science feel free to leave a comment and we'll go from there hey dan how are you okay so just a few things about this degree program um there are two options for the computer science program you can you can pursue a bachelor's degree or an associate's degree and the bachelor's degree provides students with an in-depth knowledge um and analytical skills associated the fields of i.t and computer science which opens the doors to a broad career path since computers have become such a critical part of our society and uh provides a framework applying strategies uh for the effective designs of of computing systems and this can typically uh be completed in four years the ss the bachelor's degree and the associate's degree is uh typically completed in two years um it's built on that program is built on a strong industry foundation and provides a broad understanding of business and business fundamentals um it's you know very technical and i'm sure that um reuben will explain some more about that program um i think that uh yeah i'll just let you take it from here reuben why don't you just uh give us a brief overview of yourself tell us about about you who you are we know you are reuben you live in uh houston texas and the u.s but what else can you tell us so interesting enough i i actually had a crazy crazy story basically so i i am from here but i used to live in new york and i lived in new york for four years and while i was living in new york i did a lot of small jobs and stuff like that and traveled around the world did some volunteer work uh but what's interesting was like when i when i left the volunteer work i was like oh well what am i gonna do now that was like the struggle the question of what was i gonna do after that and at that point i hadn't even uh looked at studying because looking for a degree or something like that was very hard and i was like ah man it's gonna be expensive and all that and that's what brought me sort of to the university of the people i think like university of people brings high quality education and opens it up to so many of us that you know may have not had that opportunity to have been able to pursue a degree yeah absolutely um and just out of curiosity how did you learn about the university how did i learn about the university well i learned actually just through through the youtube and the website uh honestly i think they saw like a review on a website and it took me to university of the people and from there that's where i learned through all the information and and what was really cool was having these type of uh meetups you know and where a student can actually talk because like this is what what brought me in i was like wow like it's a normal person he applied he got in you know um and and that's what kind of like motivated me as well seeing others getting accepted and seeing others you know fulfill their dreams as well because not only do you guys have students you guys have actual graduates that have gone out and done amazing things yeah we have a lot of graduates um dan gerk is a graduate he's he's commenting hey dan um and uh we have a lot of really great graduates who've gone on to ibm dell amazon you name it a lot of really great corporations um okay so tell us a little bit about your journey pursuing higher education did you have challenges in the past maybe financial i know in the us it can be very costly to go to university so maybe you could talk a little bit about that definitely you know exactly like you mentioned you know it financially is probably the number one struggle i think for most families especially all things that that happen all the time uh but i really wanted to study i really wanted to learn more about computing especially computing this is a subject i'm passionate about i've always liked um and yeah it was it was a challenge because of not knowing which college to go to or what to do uh and and what what really motivated me to learn this is because i was like well university people gives you the chance you know it and and the cool thing is you know there's no tuition fees or anything like that so it like helps you just cover your course you pay your your fees for your course but that's it and that really opens up the opportunity for a lot of us to actually be able to get higher education yeah absolutely um thanks for sharing about that so maybe you can talk a little bit more about um your experience at university of the people uh like learning the courses instructors we have you know a lot of students so maybe how you how you interact with students um yeah i'd love to hear your experience well one thing i want to say about university of the people is like like i said earlier which is their education or the way that you know you guys teach is high quality uh so first off like that's one thing i noticed as going through the curriculum because we studied uh so far i've studied two of the programming languages that we've covered there which is one of them is python and the other one is java and both of them start off with very like simple examples but we build on those we keep building on those until we get to more difficult concepts uh and and i really like how it's structured because it builds upon what you what you know or what you're learning and second of all another part of the experience has been the peer-to-peer uh learning i feel like you know people i guess don't realize how big of an impact that is and i wish that was a bigger thing because getting to see someone else's work and seeing like you know even if it's just for myself just getting to see other people's work it's amazing because it's like you learn from other people you're like wow i could have done this or wow i could have done that so it just builds upon the experience of learning apart from that i can say that uh just the other students are amazing they're super encouraging uh we have the discussion forum and every time they write something there i'm like i'm just excited to see what they write as for the instructors wow the instructors are if you have any question they'll just they'll answer promptly like they're so ready to help so i i really appreciate the way that uh that's structured yeah in addition to well i'm really happy to hear that in addition to uh instructors you're also assigned a program advisor when you um enroll at university of the people so you literally have somebody holding your hand the whole way through your experience so if you ever have any questions you can always reach out to your program advisor you can always reach out to um you know to your uh your instructor there's just a lot of support and the classes are small so we really focus on the individual um why don't you tell me a bit about your uh you know your your career um and what you've been what you were doing before university of the people what you're doing now how the computer science program will help you yeah for sure so i used to work as a as a cook and as a waiter uh that's what i used to do um and but thanks you know thanks to university of people and studying on that uh it's helped me get a tech job so i have a entry-level tech job right now uh but it is helping me and and not only that it's building up on what i am learning as well and i'm learning how to apply those things you know in the workplace as well because we repair machines and stuff like that so repair computers so it helps me you know be more efficient you know and also i have sometimes to answer questions from customers and that requires being knowledgeable of what i'm talking about so university of people greatly helps with that um okay great i'm so happy that you have had a positive experience and somebody had a question um i'll show it on the screen um roger wants to know what is the fundamental course and did you have to take any if so how was it so the fundamental course if i'm not mistaken those are the first courses yeah the foundation courses exactly foundation yeah the foundation courses yeah you do have to take them but they are very good because they gauge your knowledge that's what they're for you know they gauge how much you know about a certain subject and even for for oneself it's like a good reminder i was like out of school for like several years like four or five years i had graduated high school and those foundations were like oh wait you know get to refresh your mind on some of the concepts or ideas you know that you may have not put into practice in a while right um okay so the uh foundation courses i believe are assigned to you are they assigned to you okay thank you they're assigned to you at the beginning right before you actually become a degree-seeking student right okay okay thank you um okay so maybe you could talk i know you're just in you know six months in um and you've had a very positive experience which is great but maybe you can talk about you know where you see yourself moving um how uh maybe what you see yourself doing after graduation i know you still have time but you know any ideas yeah actually just a few uh right now currently um i'm just trying to to finish my studies but in the future i'd like to move back to new york because i spent you know like four years over there and i really enjoyed it i want to go back and i also uh i want to see myself hopefully working for for a company you know um i don't know which one is available but any one of them amazon ibm anything you know that's what i would like to do um great well i wish you all the best of luck with that i'm sure you'll do amazing things reuben um okay so maybe you can talk about you know how you balance your work uh study life like um you know how do you manage your studies around your lifestyle well i have a very busy life and i'm guessing like most everyone has a busy life uh and most students that are studying but you know one of the things that helps me and i think university of people is really good about is they are very flexible so you know we have a determined amount of time we have to do certain tasks but we have the full control of when we carry them out so if you know if i have a few extra minutes you know during my break time at work or so i can maybe read up on something very briefly you know and that'll help me keep the ideas or my mind flowing on some of the the bigger concepts uh and then just adjusting time you know if i if i can't study in the morning i'll study at night uh and if i can't study at night i'll study in the morning so adjusting to that you know and and i think another thing that helps me is not just going over just our information but also expanding on it like looking looking at what the discussion forum says you know if you have a question ask the instructor you know like the instructors are ready to help i honestly that's been one of the greatest healthy instructors and the other students because just seeing how they think or how they approach something it just expands on the whole experience okay i'm really happy to hear that and um one last question i have for you reuben i know you're busy i don't want to take up too much of your time but what are your career aspirations you kind of you kind of touched on it a little bit but i'm giving you you know another opportunity to talk about it your career aspirations in the computer science field well uh uh if hopefully you know get like a a programming job like i really enjoy programming it's a it's a language in itself you know it's not it's like uh any form of communication except it's it's basic very basic you know instead of full sentences it's just symbols and words so so communicating with computers is my passion so uh yeah that's something in the programming field is a lot of fun okay amazing um i have to tell you i took a coding class in um college and i did not understand what was happening it wasn't a coding class i don't know what it was but i just remember doing http something something and it was horrible but so great job i'm so impressed by people who understand this language because i did not understand it at all um i think i have more of a creative mind than uh like coding mine so um it's super impressive uh okay so uh thank you so much reuben again i don't wanna take up too much of your time i wish you the best of luck in your studies um any final thoughts on you know whether maybe we have people out there who aren't sure if they want to apply to your people or enroll at your people what would you say to them number one thing i would say do it apply to university of the people uh honestly the the way you you you'll get this education is just amazing it's at your own pace so you're able to grasp those concepts uh and honestly uh you're missing out if you're not upon that's the number one thing so i would really really encourage those who haven't signed up to sign up don't be scared like you know everything's a challenge but whenever we put our effort into it it works out so we you can do it too if if you haven't signed up sign up yeah thank you and we just uh reopened uh like you can register for next term um so we just opened that up so actually um in or sorry enroll for next term i um included a link in the description of this event to our application page and if anyone has any questions i saw somebody asked about the step-by-step process we have videos on our youtube account um so feel free to hop on there after this event and check those out um if anyone has any questions about anything like whether it's the application process or a question about degree programs um please feel free to reach out to admissionspeople.edu or you can always uh dm me or it's not just me i have a we have a great social media team who will answer your questions um and or leave a comment whatever it is my job is to be here to support you guys so please feel free to reach out and um yeah and i just want to say that the new term starts on thursday a week from today and i will be interviewing president xi russia so it's always very exciting to have uh president reshef on these live events so um that's all i got reuben thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it thank you thank you so much thank you and thank you everyone for uh for joining me today um it's been a pleasure so i hope everyone has a great day and stay safe and healthy wherever you are and let me know if you have any questions so thank you so much guys have a good day bye take care bye everybody

Channel: University of the People

Views: 3,480

Rating: 4.9761906 out of 5

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Id: gtB-lQCl0K0

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021