On May 25, the University will host its 2023 Commencement Ceremony for the graduating Class of 2023, many of whom will be graduating with degrees or entering fields in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Sanah Ahmed ’23, Llorenz Meliton ’23 and Anusua Nath ’23 are part of this year’s graduating class of over 3,000 students and will be utilizing their niche backgrounds and experiences gained from the University in their post graduation plans.
Both Meliton and Ahmed, graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences, reflected on their time as tutors and teaching assistants for their respective courses.
“I’ve been a math tutor for the Learning Strategies Center since my freshmen spring, so I’ve been tutoring for seven semesters now,” said Meliton, who is graduating with degrees in computer science and mathematics. Topics he’s tutored on include three levels of calculus, linear algebra and other miscellaneous classes.
“I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to connect with students from all different types of backgrounds over my interests in math, and it’s a really gratifying feeling to help someone understand something,” Meliton said.
Likewise, Ahmed, who is being awarded a degree in psychology, served as a tutor for formerly incarcerated students through Cornell Education Services for the Incarcerated, where she was also club president. She was also the head teaching assistant for Biology General 1500: Investigative Biology Laboratory, which involved teaching classes and evaluating class structure and slides.
Although graduating from the University, Ahmed will continue to work with the Smith Lab during her medical school gap year to create a tool kit to access open education resources pertaining to biology. In addition, she will be working with Prof. Denise Green, human ecology, to study Muslim accessibility to healthcare.
“Due to the modesty requirements and some of their religious and cultural values, a lot of [Muslims] don’t feel comfortable accessing care, both physical and mental health, so that creates a lot of barriers in seeking care,” said Ahmed, telling The Sun that she has witnessed members of her family refuse hospital visits due to feelings of discomfort..
Mental health has been a key focus in Ahmed’s undergraduate experience, prompting her to serve as the mental health chair for Rho Psi Eta, a pre-health academic sorority.
Nath, a civil engineering graduate, was also involved in Greek life as an active member of Alpha Omega Epsilon, a social and professional engineering sorority, since her sophomore year. In addition, she was involved with garba-raas, a traditional dance form from Gujarat, India.
In the classroom, however, Nath enjoyed learning about robots in construction through Civil and Environmental Engineering 4745: Sustainability and Automation: The Future of Construction Industry.
“We got to work with a robot that 3D prints concrete, so we were able to not only design something to be printed, but also see it get printed,” Nath said. “It was a very involved class and we learned a lot about how to make the proper consistency for concrete, how to deal with [problems with] automated structures and we learned about the pros and cons of introducing automation.”
Taking away her knowledge from that course, Nath will work under the bridge division of McLaren Engineering Group in New York City to design bridges both architecturally and structurally post graduation.
Like Nath, Meliton was also actively involved in dancing, but through Cornell-based group Breakfree, for which he was co-president. Meliton will return to his hometown to work as an application developer for Mesirow, a financial services company in Chicago, Illinois.
“I will be supporting these different lines of businesses [wealth management, investment banking, etc] by creating applications that would make their processes more efficient,” Meliton said. “I’ll be coding these applications…and using everything I learned on an abstract level from CS.”