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Meet Our Alumni

Christopher Janca (BA 2006)

Christopher Janca From an educational perspective the program was absolutely fantastic. In the early years of study I had the opportunity to establish a foundation in philosophy, psychology, computer science and linguistics. In later years I was able to tailor my studies to pursue topics that I was most passionate about. As a result, at the end of my degree I had a concrete set of skills that allowed me to pursue a career in business development.

Upon graduating from the Cognitive Science Program in 2006 I pursued an MBA from the Schulich School of Business with specializations in marketing and organizational behaviour. My undergraduate studies proved absolutely invaluable in terms of setting me up for success in my MBA studies. The cognitive science program gave me the tools to understand human motivation and information processing. These concepts are at the heart of both marketing and organizational behaviour, but they are never directly addressed in the business curriculum. As a result I was able to excel in my areas of concentration and classmates sought after my skill set during group projects.

Jaclyn Jancen (BA 2010)

Jaclyn Jancen I thoroughly loved the program. Upon making my selections in high school, one of the qualities I looked for in a university program was an interdisciplinary approach to a subject area. I applied for simply linguistics and psychology at both U of T and York, but when I found out that the cognitive science combined psychology, linguistics, philosophy and computer science I was more than excited to start studying this science. The upper level courses were all very interesting and tied together a lot of the concepts learned in the intro courses. In this sense I felt that the program was well planned out. I really enjoyed taking the biological and neuroscience courses to understand their role in cognitive science.

Currently I am enrolled in the M.Ed program at OISE, U of T. I strongly believe that the Cognitive Science program helped me gain acceptance to this program. In my statement of intent I was able to write about my thesis topic as I attempted to draw connections between Education and Cog Sci. I continue to raise points that I learned in my Cog Sci classes at OISE, and as a result I have gained a lot of respect from my teacher-colleagues and professors. Overall, Cognitive Science was a great program. I really appreciated the interdisciplinary approach. It was demanding but well worth it. It was a pleasure to meet all of the great professors in the program and to learn about the great theorists in the field.

 

Caitlyn McColeman (BA 2010)

Caitlyn McColeman I am currently a Master's student in Cognitive and Biological Psychology at Simon Fraser University. My primary interests are category learning, visual attention and machine learning. For the next two years, I will be working toward the completion of my Master's degree. It is my goal to continue working in research to learn more about human cognition by examining learning strategies employed in categorization tasks.

The Cognitive Science program at York University provided me with a general grounding of the questions associated with consciousness and cognition across the various sub-disciplines of the cognitive sciences. The Cognitive Science program's flexibility allowed me to take classes that complemented my specific interests as they developed over time.

 

Srishti Nayak (BA 2010)

I am currently doing a research internship at National University of Singapore, in the area of Developmental Psychology. One of the great things about the Cognitive Science program at York was the opportunity that it offered in terms of pursuing one's own area of interest within this vast and dynamic field. After the first few semesters, I developed an interest in the intersection between Psychology and Linguistics and was able to take many courses offered by both departments to learn more about this area.

Another thing I really liked about the program, and am finding really useful as I apply for PhD programs now, is that every student in the program graduates with a minimum amount of independent research experience. I was able to explore the topics of language acquisition, creation, and change, from an interdisciplinary perspective for my Honors Seminar Project, an endeavor that confirmed my current interest in Language Development and also helped me improve my research and presentation skills. Due to the small size of the program, by third and fourth year many of us in the program knew each other from smaller classes and were able to form a kind of academic support group.

Anna Press (BA 2010)

Anna Press I graduated from Cognitive Science at York in May 2010, and at present I'm teaching in Ankara, Turkey. This program was invaluable as it allowed me to analyze information from a variety of perspectives; I took courses in statistics, linguistics and psychology, for example. Cognitive science is one of the most intellectually stimulating fields of study in my opinion, because there is no end to the number of topics that can be covered.

The program at York is distinct in that there are a plethora of options available to students. One of my peers had an interest in computer science, so he took more courses in that field whereas I preferred psychology and philosophy so those are the courses I took more of; however, another advantage at York is that it's mandatory for students to take a certain number of courses in a variety of disciplines. We don't graduate having only studied a handful of topics from one perspective, but rather by the end we've read and dissected information using tools from many fields.

 

Teresa Valenzano (BA 2010)

The Cognitive Science program at York University was a great stepping-stone for my future ambitions. The interdisciplinary nature of the field allowed me to expand my knowledge in various topics while unifying different concepts within the Cognitive Science domain. I am currently studying Speech and Language Science at the University of Western Ontario for my Masters' of Science degree.

My cognitive science background has allowed me to bring a new perspective into the field, by assessing the effect of varying cognitive demands on the motoric act of speech production for Parksinon's disease patients; melding my interest for language with my educational background of cognition. I am hoping to pursue a clinical degree in speech-language pathology, as well as follow with a PhD in Speech and Language Science. Without such a diverse program, I do not believe I would have such a well-rounded knowledge within the fields of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and artificial intelligence.


 

Are you a graduate of the Cognitive Science Program? We'd love to hear from you; please contact the program director (for contact information, click on the Contact Us page).