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When Trustee Scholarship recipient Joseph Crobak ’06 (Mechanicsburg, Pa.) first visited Lafayette as a high school student, he found professors who were happy to ask him about his plans and aspirations — and eager to hear his answers.
Several years later, the computer science major worked closely with one of those professors to determine the best way to find the shortest path from one point in a network to all other points.
“I compared and contrasted different algorithms to determine which work faster and use less data storage,” says Crobak, who conducted the research last semester with Jonathan Berry, associate professor of computer science, through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program.
In EXCEL, students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
Berry says “Dijkstra’s Algorithm,” conceived in 1959 by computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, was the standard process used to solve the networking problem for about 40 years. Algorithms, as used by computer scientists, are well-defined processes for computing a result.
“Recent advances have yielded better algorithms,” Berry says, explaining that he and Crobak worked with the newer algorithms — first reading academic papers, then experimenting with modifications to the ideas presented in the papers.
Berry says that Crobak, who ranked at the top of his Analysis of Algorithms class and is a skilled programmer, is “intelligent, sincere, friendly, and always ready for new challenges.”
Crobak says the class gave him solid preparation for the work.
“We did math proofs and all kinds of notation,” he says. “It was a thinking course rather than a coding course.”
He says the computer organizations class, which he took during the fall semester, gave him background on binary representation, which helped him read the academic papers.
Crobak adds that his first impression of Lafayette, gleaned from a conversation with William Collins, associate professor and head of computer science, has proved to be correct.
“I found the professors really seem to care about the students in the computer science department,” he says. “One thing that’s great about them is that they spend lots of time on campus. We have two or three professors who are here until midnight a couple times a week.”
Crobak says that aside from the late-night help, professors have helped him in a number of areas.
“They’ll advise you on any kind of decisions,” he says. “They help with projects and homework. They write letters of recommendation. They give advice on what to do for the summer.”
Crobak, who plans to resume the research after spending the fall semester at the National University of Ireland in Galway, says that along with a dedicated faculty, Lafayette offers excellent facilities in the new Acopian Engineering Center.
“We’ve got a bunch of powerful servers and even the lighting is nice,” he says. “We have natural light as well as ceiling lights. The atmosphere is conducive to doing work.”
Finally, Crobak says, Lafayette has offered him a sense of camaraderie with like-minded computer science majors.
“The computer science student body — my peers — are a great bunch of people to be with,” he says.
A graduate of Mechanicsburg Area High School, Crobak is a member of the campus chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery and competed on the team that won the University of Virginia site competition last fall at the annual Mid-Atlantic Programming Contest. He’s also co-captain of the Ultimate Frisbee Club.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Forty-two students were accepted to present their work at the annual conference this past April.
Selected from among Lafayette’s top applicants, Trustee Scholarship recipients such as Crobak have distinguished themselves through exceptional academic achievement in high school. They receive from Lafayette an annual minimum scholarship of $7,500 (totaling $30,000 over four years) or a grant in the full amount of their demonstrated need if the need is more than $7,500.