Digging In is a regular series of blog posts profiling UDig employees. We hope this series helps you get to know our team and understand why we dig what we do!
The 2021 UDig intern class has been with us for several weeks now. Hannah Dorney, John Parish, and Cooper Steinour have been great additions to the team. Dig in to learn a little more about their unique personalities and internships!
UDig: What school do you attend, and what are you majoring in?
Hannah: Virginia Commonwealth University, Applied Mathematics
John: University of Richmond, Business with concentrations in Management Consulting & Data Analytics
Cooper: James Madison University, Computer Science
UDig: What prompted you to choose your major?
Hannah: I was previously a Chemistry major but ended up not liking it. I enjoyed Calculus and applying mathematics to real problems.
John: I chose business because it can be applied to any field and opens the doors to many different opportunities.
Cooper: I took a computer science class in high school. My teacher was great, and I caught onto the subject very quickly and was soon helping other students in the class.
UDig: What was your favorite class outside your major?
Hannah: Intro to Python piqued my interest in data.
John: I planned to be a Spanish minor and study abroad. Unfortunately, the pandemic put my study abroad plans on hold. But, my knowledge of the Spanish language has given me the opportunity to volunteer at Greene Elementary in their ESL program.
Cooper: Psychology has always been fascinating to me. It is something you can apply in everyday life.
UDig: Why did you choose UDig for your internship?
Hannah: UDig’s internship has given me the chance to be in the data space. Many of the opportunities I found did not align as well with my future career plans.
John: This internship allowed me to work directly with clients and aligned with my major and concentrations.
Cooper: I was looking for an internship in software engineering, and UDig’s culture seemed very modern and fun.
UDig: Tell us a little bit about the project you are working on.
Hannah: I am currently working on an engagement where we are migrating data into Snowflake. We used robotic process automation (RPA) to collect the data, and I was able to help use Python’s Pandas library to rearrange schemas to load them into Snowflake. We then used Tableau to create dashboards for the loaded reports and display the data for managers. On another project, I used results from an employee survey to develop dashboards in Tableau to visualize the results for easy understanding.
John: This summer, I have been working with two of UDig’s largest clients. So far, the majority of my focus has been on a custom application build. I have been working with the website we are developing to test new features and look for bugs. Along with this, I have been participating in daily standups, sprint planning meetings, code reviews, and Q&A sessions. Being able to work directly with clients and UDig team members has been a great learning experience.
Cooper: I am working on the same custom application build as John. This project has helped me experience all the aspects of an agile methodology on a large project firsthand. I began by shadowing some intelligent people and gaining a perspective of how they go about their work. Recently, I have been more hands-on with the project doing some small bug fixes and tasks on the C# backend and typescript + React frontend. I have also gained experience working with APIs and GraphQL.
UDig: What’s the most played song in your library?
Hannah: All the White Stripes songs
John: Devil in a New Dress – Kanye West
Cooper: Sympathy by the Goo Goo Dolls
UDig: What did you want to be when you grew up?
Hannah: I always wanted to be a Space Scientist to study the planets.
John: Being a pilot always seemed like a cool job growing up.
Cooper: I had no idea what I wanted to be growing up. There was a running joke in my family that I wanted to be a “balloon blower upper.”
UDig: You’ve been told you have to take the rest of the day off. What will you do?
Hannah: I’d go antiquing. Everything closes before 5 pm, so I never get the chance to go during the workweek.
John: I would rent a jet ski and spend the day on the river.
Cooper: I’d play tennis and spend some time outside in the sun.
