2024 Election Results and Farewell from 2023 DSAC

Hi CS Majors,

This is a pretty bittersweet email for me to write, so please excuse my ramblings for a minute! Firstly, I just wanted to thank all of you for a great year—from everyone who showed up to events, to people who gave us feedback, to those who helped out in any way. You all make the CS department a better place to belong to.

I also wanted to take this as an opportunity to answer the most frequent question I have gotten since the start of my time on DSAC: What does DSAC even do? It’s a funny question because (believe it or not) we meet every single week, and do numerous hours of work outside of that. Some of the work we have done this year includes:

• Hosting the ‘Welcome Back to CS’ event, ULA Dinner, Halloween Trick-or-Treating, and Holiday event to build community
• Hosting ULA Training to improve pedagogy
• FINALLY acquiring a coffee machine for AKW!!!!
• Collecting feedback about courses in the form of surveys and focus groups
• Presenting our curriculum recommendations to faculty
• Meeting with ULAs to suggest improvements to ULA culture at Yale
• Suggesting improvements to CPSC 490 (senior project)
• Hosting an event in collaboration with NSBE @ the house
• Hosting a Lunar New Year party with the department
• Organizing lunches with DUSes for students in all the joint majors
• Ordering CS merch!!
• …and more! Although a lot of our work is intangible, I hope you have felt some improvements in the department over the past few years. And if you feel the department still has room to grow – it definitely does! Please keep criticizing and leaving feedback, since that’s the only way to make change.

Also, a big thank you to Alice, our graduating senior, and Addison and Ethan, the other outgoing DSAC members, for their hard work. So many of our accomplishments this semester would not have been possible without all of their efforts and advocacy. I have also decided to step down this year (hence the bittersweetness)—if you know me at all you know how much time I’ve spent on DSAC work since first year, so I think the time is right to let other people come in with enthusiasm and big plans. But I’ll still be around the department for a year, so please say hi!

Speaking of new people, the moment you’ve all been waiting for—election results! DSAC for the 2024-25 academic year will be:

• Tyler Schroder ‘25
• Ben Xu ‘26
• Caleb Nieh ‘26
• Elizabeth Stanish ‘26
• Bill Qian ‘26
• Lauren Lee ‘27

DSAC is definitely in great hands, and I’m so excited to see what projects they all come up with!

Lastly, we know that this has been a really tumultuous moment on campus, and a difficult semester for many due to the protests. In our very limited capacity: we see you and hear you. We know that your role as a CS major is a very small aspect of your identity, albeit one that may take up much of your time here at Yale. You are all valued and cared-for members of this community, and we urge you to continue critically engaging with this institution and connecting your CS education to its broader context in the world.

DSAC work is only possible with your collaboration, so thank you again for your hard work and willingness to show up. In the end, our only goal is to make the CS department a better place for you, so we hope it was (at least a little) better, and that it will continue to improve.

Have a great summer everyone! See you next year :)

And, for the last time ever: Best, Inssia (+DSAC)