Student in 5
Chris Cirefice
Major/ Minor
M.S. -ACS; B.S., Computer Science; B.A., French & Applied Linguistics
What do you love most about the GVSU College of Computing?
Good question... it's been a long time since I did my undergrad,
and I'm only taking one master's class per semester as I work
full-time at GV. During undergrad, I enjoyed finding friends in the
program through classes and extracurricular activities like
programming meetups and events.
Additionally, I felt that almost every professor that I had in my
undergrad classes was invested in our learning outcomes, and did a
good job teaching the material. Some classes were exceptionally
challenging which was great for my personal and professional
development long-term, and there were a good amount of opportunities
in different classes to choose the direction for homework/projects,
allowing students to express their interest and creativity in areas
outside of traditional academic study.
I think our professors are fantastic, and if (during the
College's growth/expansion) that quality can be maintained, students
in these programs will have ample opportunity to learn and apply their
knowledge in meaningful ways, both at GVSU and in industry in Michigan
and elsewhere.
What was your favorite project, research, or opportunity
you’ve worked on during your studies?
"Pokemon: Battle Arena" in my undergrad CIS capstone
project. I was able to re-write the Pokemon (Gen 1) game engine from
scratch in Java to be used as a code library in our Android project.
At the end of the capstone, we had a fully-functional online
multiplayer Pokemon battle app where you could choose your team, the
Pokemon's levels and move set, and battle it out on your phone. Pretty
rad, and a very good opportunity for us to express our creativity and interest.
What is a problem you would like to solve using tech, even if
it feels impossible now?
Easing administrative burden of government (federal, state and
local) programs, at scale. I've been actively engaged in streamlining
program administration for affordable housing management entities as
well as consultants engaging in consulting and quality control (file
review) work in the sector. The breadth of stakeholders in this
industry is huge, so trying to build a software that serves each
stakeholder's major requirements while incorporating state/federal
regulatory requirements across 10+ distinct housing programs has been
an intellectual challenge, but one that is slowly piecing itself
together into a very cohesive product and service.
What is an unexpected skill or lesson you have learned in your
studies here at GV?
My interest in world languages (French, Japanese) and studies in
them contributed greatly to my ability to analyze and understand
requirements in a wide variety of sectors, including government
regulation. The skills gained to parse and understand language of all
kinds, it turns out, has been exceptionally useful for every
programming project that I've worked on.
What are your future plans?
To continue to develop our B2B SaaS to aid in government
affordable housing program management and compliance, which is already
a fully-functioning business with multiple clients. I'd like to expand
our team and work with more clients to expand access to our product,
while establishing equity and profit sharing for the development team
and industry contributors who help to build and refine the product.
Additionally, to incentivize Digital Transformation at GVSU (at
scale) through a hyper-modern low-code/no-code platform called Notion,
which we use in the Language Resource Center to power all of our
business operations, including scheduling/calendars, resource
(database) management, the LRC's institutional knowledge base, and
staff training/onboarding tooling.
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