Trisha Agarwal

Major: Computer Science

Minor: Mathematics

As a brown woman in STEM, I rarely find others that look like me inside and outside my classes. Early in my college career, this made me feel alone and discouraged, leaving me to question if I belonged. However, I have realized over time that my presence in these spaces is an opportunity to help others feel like they belong. I have been fortunate to be a mentor and sounding board for other women in computing. Since joining mock trial as the only international student and person of color, I have been happy to see the diversity of the program grow. When I start working in the gaming industry, a workforce traditionally dominated by white males, I hope to continue serving as a role model.

My love for diversity and inclusion extends from representation to action. For me, this means affecting policy, process, and programs to make Lafayette feel more like home to all its students. My desire to promote inclusion of all identities motivates me to be an active member of the Faculty Committee on Diversity, International Students Association, and Refugee Action. Through these, I am able to bring my perspective and persistence to many conversations, such as advocating for a preferred name policy through my work with the Faculty Diversity Committee. Further, I have worked to make classrooms more comfortable for everyone through organizing workshops for Computer Science Teaching Assistants as well as participating in workshops for faculty through CITLS. I view the ideal Lafayette student as one who leaves the school a better place than they found it. Personally, this means using both representation and action to promote inclusion and diversity, and I am proud that my campus involvement reflects this. More importantly, I am grateful for the opportunity Lafayette has provided me to find this voice so I may carry it onward in life.

Other Information:
Academic Activity/Award 1:
Head Teaching Assistant (Department of Computer Science)|1|I served as the Head Teaching Assistant for the Computer Science department in Fall 2019 when the position was first introduced. The idea behind the position was to offer mentorship to Computer Science TAs as well as garner interest from other students in the position. I designed bi‐weekly workshops for the TAs where we covered a variety of topics like checking out biases, dealing with frustration and finding novel ways to explain a concept.
Academic Activity/Award 2:
Teaching Assistant (Computer Science)|3|I have served as a Teaching Assistant for several Computer Science courses including CS150 and CS205. This includes answering questions in the lab with the goal of guiding students to their own solutions as well as helping students learn how to effectively debug their programs. Further, I served as a Teaching Assistant for introductory statistics for a semester. This included helping students learn R, basic programming principles, and statistical concepts.
Academic Activity/Award 3:
Peer tutor, CS.getHelp() tutor|3|I have been a tutor for the HUB since sophomore year and have tutored students one‐on‐one in many courses for Computer Science and Math. This includes helping with assignments as well as teaching and revising concepts. Further, I held drop in tutoring sessions for CS.getHelp() which catered to introductory level CS students. I helped students debug code, understand concepts, study for exams and work with each other to better understand material.
Academic Activity/Award 4:
Upsilon Pi Epsilon|2|I was inducted into the Computer Science honours society as a junior, and was elected vice president on induction.
Academic Activity/Award 5:
Pi Mu Epsilon|2|I was inducted into the Mathematics honours society as a junior.
Academic Activity/Award 6:
Alpha Alpha Alpha|2|I was inducted into the National Honor Society for First Generation students in my junior year. This is also the year the college received its charter as the Gamma chapter.
Academic Activity/Award 7:
EXCEL Scholar (Computer Science)|1|I worked with Prof. Chun Wei Liew for the 2018‐2019 academic year to maintain and improve an Intelligent Tutoring System which provides immediate and customized feedback to students without human intervention. This system is used to teach advanced data structures in an introductory Computer Science course.
Academic Activity/Award 8:
EXCEL Scholar (Mathematics)|1|I did research under the guidance of Prof. Jonathan Bloom on extending the notion of permutations to higher dimension space the summer of 2017. I wrote highly optimized programs using parallel processing to simulate mathematical objects. I formed and proved conjectures about permutations in 3 dimensions.
Academic Activity/Award 9:
Eugene P Chase Phi Beta Kappa Award|1|I was awarded this award that is given to sophomores who demonstrate scholarship as first year students.
Academic Activity/Award 10:
Dean’s List|4|I am proud to have been included in the college’s Dean’s List every semester I have completed at Lafayette.
Campus Service Activity /Award 1:
Head Resident|1|As a senior, I served as the Head Resident of Easton, Ruef and March Halls, supervising 13 RAs. My role involved serving as a liaison between professional staff, student staff and other students. I went to weekly meetings with professional staff as well as other HRs, held my own staff meetings, reviewed and wrote reports as well as assisted my staff in any way they needed. Further, I organized a workshop on the experience of international students and students of color as RAs.
Campus Service Activity /Award 2:
Resident Adviser|2|I started my career in Residence Life as an Resident Advisor in Watson Hall for first year women and was awarded the prestigious Professional Staff Award. I then went on to become a Resident Advisor for a mixed upper class floor in Keefe Hall. In my role as an RA, I organized programs, wrote weekly reports about community happenings, led community meetings, enforced policy, oversaw facilities, and made the community as comfortable as possible for my residents. Further, I was a part of a variety of focus groups including ones with Public Safety, and Sustainability. These allowed me to communicate student concerns as well as find solutions and opportunities for collaboration.
Campus Service Activity /Award 3:
Faculty Committee on Diversity|3|I have served as an active and engaged student representative to the Faculty Committee on Diversity for the past three years. In this time, we have worked on a variety of issues in that time including remarking single use bathrooms as gender neutral ones as well as looking into the feasibility of hiring an Ombudsperson. We have also asked for regular updates on the college’s plan on accessibility to hold the college accountable. Further, our committee has been pushing for the development and implementation of a preferred name policy for the past three years and is proud to see some stages of it take action including preferred names on ID cards as well as changes on Moodle. Lastly, we were also able to communicate concerns and ideas on issues like first generation students, international students, athletes, and staff treatment directly to the President when she visited our committee.
Campus Service Activity /Award 4:
Bias Response Team|2|I was a part of the bias response team while I was a sophomore and junior. The purpose of the team is to make recommendations to the Vice President for Campus Life for comprehensive educational and supportive responses to incidents of bias on campus. We discussed recent cases on campus, talked about initiatives like archiving the history of incidents, and were involved in the planning and launch of the OnePard universal reporting platform.
Campus Service Activity /Award 5:
Lafayette Symposium Committee|1|I was invited by the President to serve as a student representative to the Lafayette Symposium Committee in my junior year. The purpose of the series was to bring speakers who would talk to issues with tensions surrounding them. The committee was made up of students, faculty and staff and charged with deciding on the speakers for the year. After much debate, discussion and  consideration, the committee invited Alan Cooperman, director of religion research at the Pew Research Center. Dr. Cooperman delivered a talk titled “Is Organized Religion in Decline in America? And Why Should We Care?”.
Campus Service Activity /Award 6:
Women in Computing|4|I have been a member of Women in Computing throughout my college career. I have been able to share my experience navigating the field and provide younger women in Computer Science with resources that I found useful, including the Grace Hopper resume database.
Campus Service Activity /Award 7:
Data Associate|1|I am a part of a pilot group of statistical consultants under the guidance of Prof. Trent Gaugler, called Data Associates. The aim of the group is to provide the Lafayette community as well as alumni with a resource for design and experiments and statistical analysis. We aim to help people use their data and promote statistical literacy. So far, I have been working with a thesis student in Psychology to understand and use a new type of statistical correlation. I am also working on helping an alum analyse Indonesian government documents from Indonesia to find evidence of corruption.
Campus Service Activity /Award 8:
Mock Trial|3|I competed on the Lafayette mock trial team for my freshman, junior and senior years. I predominantly played the role of an attorney, where I directed and cross examined witnesses, engaged in objection battles, and often delivered closing statements.
Campus Service Activity /Award 9:
International Students Association|4|I have been an active part of the International Student Association all four years. I have participated in many panels on topics like the diversity of South Asian food, the history behind Holi and how it relates to colour runs as well as my city, Kolkata. I also served as the volunteering coordinator during my sophomore year on the ISA board.
Campus Service Activity /Award 10:
Association for Computing Machinery|4|I have been an active member of the Association of Computing Machinery. I have been a part of many panels including panels on how to find an internship. In my junior year, I went on to serve as president of the club and reinstated Lafayette as a formal chapter of the national organization. As President, I worked with the board to organize workshops and presentations. This included presentations by students and faculty as well as guests like Ms. Elonka Dunin.
Community Service 1:
Alternative School Break|4|I have been a part of Alternative School Break(ASB) all four years in college. This involvement includes four different trips focused on building interfaith communities, Native American rights, and refugee resettlement. I also served as the education chair from freshman Spring through sophomore year where I helped team leaders plan their team’s education as well as planned campus wide events on topics like Voluntourism and the gender imbalance in community service. I then went on to become a team leader(TL) and led a trip on Native American rights to Pine Ridge reservation, South Dakota. In my role as a TL I worked with my co‐TL to build a sense of trust within our group, educate the group on our social issue, plan logistics of the trip, and work on reorientation. As a senior, I became a co‐president of ASB. This year I am working with the rest of the executive board to push new initiatives like an alumni event that was a resounding success.
Community Service 2:
Refugee Action|2|I have been a part of Refugee Action for two years. In my work through the organization, I have striven to create awareness about the crisis as well as help resettle local refugee families.
Community Service 3:
March Around the World|2|March Around the World (MAW) is an annual program aimed at sharing the diversity that the Lafayette community has to offer with elementary schoolers at March Elementary. I volunteered to organize one of the five activities as a first year student. I then went on to organize MAW in my sophomore year. This involved coming up with a theme and working with a group of Lafayette students to plan and execute a fun filled evening.
Community Service 4:
Literacy Day|2|I volunteered at Literacy Day freshman and sophomore year. Both years I led the participating children through an activity related to the book being read.
Community Service 5:
Connected Classrooms|1|I was a part of a connected classrooms event where we taught third graders about basic scatter plots and regression. It was exciting to be able to share the joy of learning with the participants.
Special Interest Activity/Award 1:
Grace Hopper Celebration Student Scholar|2|I was awarded the prestigious GHC Student Scholarship in 2017 and 2019 to attend the conference both years. The scholarship is awarded to women that are active in their communities and working towards the advancement of women in computing. I was able to meet and form connections with many women in the field through these experiences. Further, I helped other  students from Lafayette and my high school in India also apply for the scholarship.
Special Interest Activity/Award 2:
Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship|2|I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on the importance of inclusion in STEM that was heavily attended by faculty. I also represented the student voice in a workshop for faculty on handling difficult situations in the classroom.
Special Interest Activity/Award 3:
One Love Workshop Facilitator|2|I am trained in facilitating workshops focused on identifying signs of domestic violence and discussing strategies for intervention as well as resources for support. I co‐lead such a workshop for RAs during RA training.
Special Interest Activity/Award 4:
Cryptography Competition|3|I, along with my team, won the annual cryptography competition three years in a row. This involved breaking ten cyphers that lead us to clues hidden around campus. Each year we broke our own record for fastest completion of the competition.