This scholarship was established by the Watt Publishing Company (now WATT Global Media) in honor of co-founder, J.W. Watt.
Congratulations to our 2021-2022 J.W. Watt scholarship recipient!
Carmen Nightfall
Major: Life Sciences Communication with a certificate Environmental Studies
Thanks to the generous LSC scholarships, I will be able to get a new computer. A new computer will aid communication and analytic skills development and allow for easier interfacing and involvement as it makes video calls easier. One of my focus areas of interest in LSC is computer assisted/computer-learning data analysis. The software and applications needed for this kind of computer-programming greatly strain my current computer, often resulting in lost data and time from computer crashes. With a new computer that is now within reach thanks to LSC scholarships, instead of spending time re-doing code, re-writing, or re-creating presentations, my analysis projects will be completed faster and can involve more complicated machine-learning techniques with an updated computer processor.
Future goals: My academic interests include data analytics because it allows us to identify aspects and the nature of relationships of variables in life and in science. How to effectively communicate those aspects and relationships is paramount to moving toward greater understanding, sharing of science, and dissemination in vernacular relevant to audiences. My career plans include engaging with data and Native Nations, data and genetics, and data and ecology/microbiology and sharing the richness of discovery in that data. As a Native student, it is important that there be Native sovereignty of Native data, and I wish to forward that endeavor and empower those of Native Nations to do the same. Though I do not know exactly in what form my career will manifest, it will greatly involve creation of projects, research, use of data analytics, and translating illuminated relationships into understandable and usable knowledge.