Heading into her freshman year at U-M, Julia Kassab planned to pursue political science and become a lawyer because she was passionate about social justice.
Then she decided to enroll in U-M’s CS KickStart. The weeklong program takes place right before school starts and is designed to introduce young women to computer science.
“That was my first exposure to computer science or coding, and it was so cool,” Kassab said.
That experience was valuable later when Kassab applied to be a research assistant for a political science project conducted by Eugenia Quintanilla, a U-M doctoral candidate who became a mentor to Kassab.
“I was hired in part because I had CS experience, which many political science students do not,” Kassab said.
“On that project, I ended up working a lot with data analysis, which is where I discovered data science,” Kassab said. “I realized I liked mixing social problems with computation.”
Shortly thereafter, Kassab was introduced to the School of Information by a family friend. She’d known little about UMSI previously but soon discovered its programming allowed her to marry multiple interests: working with people, technology and data science.
She applied and was accepted into the program her sophomore year. Kassab is set to graduate with a major in information science and analysis.
“I’m so grateful it worked out because now I will leave this university confident that I can navigate a technological world, which I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten with just a social sciences degree,” she said.
Kassab also sought myriad opportunities beyond the classroom.
A first-generation college student, resources were somewhat limited growing up outside Detroit, and Kassab didn’t have the opportunity to explore much beyond Michigan. So, she studied abroad twice through UMSI — a semester in Greece and a three-week spring term in Spain.
Kassab also joined the Global Scholars Program, a living and learning community where she explored global justice issues and met like-minded students. She was nominated by the program director last fall to be the student speaker at the Global Citizenship and Practice Symposium.
“That was one of my proudest moments at U-M,” Kassab said. “I love public speaking, and I felt empowered as a student to be able to share my unique perspective.”
Kassab’s involvement with LSA’s Barger Leadership Institute has also provided opportunities for growth. She completed the Leadership Certificate program and the Social Transformation Fellowship, and she has worked as an Applied Leadership Fellow on the events team.
In her role on the events team, Kassab recently set up free etiquette classes with the Detroit Academy of Etiquette.
“I try to bring in my perspective as a first-generation student,” Kassab said. “Offering classes on etiquette was not meant to be stuffy, but to remove obstacles and make people feel at ease in networking situations.”
Post-graduation, Kassab will remain at U-M to earn her Master of Science in Information on the Big Data Analytics Track. “There are so many resources for undergraduates at Michigan, and I did my best to take advantage of as many as I could; they really shaped me as a person,” Kassab said.
“I will miss that, but I’m hoping to still find that in graduate school and, later, seek it out in life. My undergrad years at Michigan trained me to think about how to do that.”
