COMPSA vice-president (operations) candidate Shreyansh Anand talks entrepreneurship

Candidate hopes to create mentorship opportunities, streamline resources

Image by: Maggie Gowland
Shreyansh Anand

Shreyansh Anand, CompSci ’21, is pushing to fill the gaps in the computing experience at Queen’s, starting with mentors and entrepreneurship.

The second-year biomedical computing student, running for vice-president (operations), is currently the start-up coordinator on the COMPSA Executive—a position he created.

“There’s not a lot of effort or push towards start-up, entrepreneurship community, or innovation,” Anand told The Journal in an interview. “So, I sent a letter to the president and the vice-president this year and they were ecstatic.”

In this position, he helped organize an entrepreneurship panel that will feature Queen’s alumni and current students on Jan. 31.  

Aside from mentorship, Anand wants to create a platform that makes information about academics, professional development, and job applications accessible to students.

 “I know, especially for computer science, job applications and everything come really fast and hard for first-years starting to look for internships,” he said.

“I really want to let people know that [these resources] exist, especially with the new OSAP changes, and these are things that you can use at your disposal.”

He also hopes to increase information accessibility for computing students at Queen’s. He’s part of a team that has designed an app called Queen’s to Go, which includes a map of resources on campus. 

With the help of the COMPSA Executive team, Anand became the start-up coordinator to promote entrepreneurs in Computing. He’s also involved with groups like the Queen’s Machine Intelligence and Neuroevolution Design team.

Anand’s platform for the vice-president position focuses on creating a mentorship program that pairs first-year students with upper-years in the same specialization. The program is modelled on the current concurrent education buddy system.

“I really want to emulate that into Compsci, and create our own mentorship system, especially because all of the specializations are so unique and so different from each other that sometimes not just any upper-year can help you.”

The desire to create this program stems from Anand’s own experience transitioning into first-year, when QSuccess partnered him with an upper-year student.

Thanks to this mentorship, Anand found many of his friends approached him to ask questions because he seemed to know everything about the program.

“He mentored me, guided me through different problems, and answered any questions I had—he met with me throughout the year just to make sure I was doing alright,” Anand said. “And I was really lucky because no one else, not many people, not many first years, none of my friends had [a mentor].”

Tags

COMPSA, Election

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