Kyle Rosa - Honors Portfolio

I found my interview with Dr. Presgrave to be very inspiring and educational. This was my first real interview with someone who was actively involved in the IT field, so I was very excited to ask him questions about his research and how he got to where he is today. I started out with asking what degrees and qualifications he had, and I learned that he has a Master's in Computer Science, as well as his PHD in Business with a concentration in information systems. This was super awesome to discover, as it meant that he was very qualified in both the business and programming side of the IT field. He told me that he mostly learned about how components think and interact with each other in his studies, which is a major part of the IT career as a whole. Dr. Presgrave said his major draw to the IT field was the fact that there are always new things to research in the field, and the way classes are taught are changed as a result. I would definitely agree that this makes the IT field much more interesting to look into, and it is reassuring to know that someone with as much experience as Dr. Presgrave agrees. It suprised me that Dr. Presgrave began working as a teacher even before he had his PHD, as it seems he was already sure that teaching is how he wanted to spend his time in the field. Undoubtedly my favorite part of the interview was when I asked Dr. Presgrave about his past and current research as a PHD graduate. He mostly spent his research time looking into how efficiently students in the IT field learn online vs. in person. He noted that IT students tend to be more technically inclined, meaning they learn and pick up information better when they are able to have their device in front of them during class. This makes sense, as most IT students will go on to be sitting in front of a computer all day for their job. Ultimately, it is an IT person's skills in front of computer that will define how well they perform in the field, no matter what specialization they are in. Although Dr. Presgrave did not have as much experience researching cybersecurity, which is what I am most interested in, he still had one research experience relating to cybersecurity. It essentially involved him developing a tool that created a new password and pneumonic device for users, which added an extra level of security by using words that were auto generated to make sense of a password. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my interview with Dr. Presgrave and cannot wait to continue learning in this field!