Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony participated in the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Pilot Expansion Conference for Minority Serving Institutions, held August 10–11 in Portland, OR. Anthony presented a poster, “An AI-powered Academic Advising Chatbot,” highlighting a Spring 2026 computer science capstone project completed with Frank Desilets ’26, Alyanna Martinez ’27, Emilio Salas ’26, and Evan Williams ’26. The conference was funded by the National Science Foundation and organized by the Computing Research Association.

Southwestern was well-represented at the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region Conference at McNeese State University on April 24, with eight students presenting their software engineering capstone work. While only some members from each capstone team traveled, all are named here for their contributions. Two of those students also presented their research. All projects were supervised by Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony. The research poster by Evelyn Harrington ’26 and Camille James ’26 on “What Differentiates a BA from a BS in CS? Insights from Liberal Arts Colleges in the CCSC:SC Region” won 4th prize in the poster competition. Evelyn and Aaron Garza ’26 also presented “Chunch Volunteer Management System,” done in collaboration with teammates Reid Williams ’26 and Eleanor Wagner ’26. Camille also presented “Pantry Inventory Review and Tracking Enhancement (PIRATE)” with Nhi ‘Amy’ Tran ’26, done in collaboration with teammates Cade Doehler ’27 and Aidan Fitzgerald ’26. Alyanna Martinez ’27 presented “SU University Knowledge Assistant,” done in collaboration with teammates Frank Desilets ’26, Emilio Salas ’26, and Evan Williams ’26, which won 5th prize in the poster competition. “Matching with your Pirate Crew,” presented by Aidan Balakrishnan ’26, Ben McKallip ’26, and Matthew Volkin ’26, was done in collaboration with teammate Tanner Klein ’26.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony and co-authors Ananya Das of Middlebury College and Christine Chung, Charles Lincoln, Krishh Tipnis, and Kate Vento, all of Connecticut College, had their paper accepted to PRIMA 2025: Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems. Students Charles and Kate presented the paper on “Metric Distortion of STV on the Line and the Impact of Voter Turnout” at the conference in Modena, Italy. The paper, available here, analyzes the ranked choice voting mechanism Single Transferable Vote, provides theoretical results on metric distortion, or how much worse an elected candidate is than the socially optimal choice, and considers how distortion is impacted by voter turnout. It also studies the impact of voter turnout on the 2021 New York City Democratic Primary Election, which used ranked choice voting.

Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony co-authored a paper, titled “Bachelors of Arts versus Bachelors of Science Degrees in Computer Science,” with Edward Talmage at Bucknell University and Andrea Tartaro at Furman University. The paper was published in the proceedings of the 29th annual Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northeastern Conference. It finds that there is a lack of consistent definitions for each degree within computer science, but that insights can be gained along several dimensions for liberal arts institutions that offer both degrees.

Computer science majors Timothy Berlanga ’25, Rudy Guerra Jr. ’25, and Kyle Keleher ’25 attended the Consortium for Computer Sciences in Colleges: South Central Region Conference at McNeese State University on April 5. They won first place in the poster competition for their work “Better Picks: Using Machine Learning to Make Smarter Sports Betting Decisions.” This project, done along with Kade Townsend ’25 in the Computer Science Capstone taught by Lord Chair and Professor of Computer Science Barbara Anthony, built upon ideas first developed in the artificial intelligence course taught by Associate Professor of Computer Science Jacob Schrum.