Last spring, Brendan Streich, director of communications with Tech’s College of Computing, was sitting in on an interview with two computing majors and a reporter from The Chronicle of Higher Education when he had one of those elusive lightbulb moments.
Student Connie Chen, then about to graduate with a computing degree, was discussing her long-running interest in moviemaking, but when the reporter asked if she wanted to pursue a career as a filmmaker, she demurred.
“No,” Chen said. “I want to be more.”
Streich promptly excused himself from the room to run out and jot down the phrase.
“At the same time, my team had been revisiting our brand—we had done all this research and building out our vision and our mission to figure out who we are,” he says. “Up until that point, we really had a good foundation for what we are, but we didn’t have the right words to put it all together.”
Chen’s words—“Be More”—became the keystone of the College’s recently-unveiled marketing makeover, which emphasizes the countless ways computing can augment and enrich other fields, from medicine to government to entertainment and more.
In Chen’s case, studying computing meant gaining a deep knowledge of the changing technologies that shape and promote the film industry—which was of special interest to her, a budding auteur who caught her moviemaking-bug in the early days of YouTube.
This summer, a few weeks after her graduation, Chen was invited by the College of Computing to make a short film that showcased both her talents as a filmmaker and the value she’d pulled from her computing studies. The result, titled “Dream.Encode,” has just debuted on the College’s newly-relaunched website.
(Earlier this year, Chen won top honors at the 2012 Campus Movie Fest for her short “The Therapist.”)
Chen isn’t the only College of Computing student to bring an interdisciplinary approach to her studies—the College’s new website is set to showcase a series boundary-pushing students and researchers, including CEO-turned-robotics student Jasmine Lawrence. To follow the series—and to keep tabs on all the accomplishments of Tech’s computing program—visit cc.gatech.edu.
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