Cohort 33 gathers over Zoom for class this semester.
Just before 6PM EDT on Thursday, May 6, the well-dressed and well-prepared students of Cohort 33 were taking their last stabilizing deep breaths and sending final encouraging texts to their teammates before taking the virtual stage. The spring 2021 QUEST Conference was an exciting evening filled with impressive presentations from students sharing their capstone projects.
After 230 applicants and 159 interviewees, 90 new QUESTees were accepted to the QUEST Honors Program in late March. QUEST community, please give a warm welcome to Cohorts 37 and 38! I know you are just as excited as I am for the new QUESTees to experience the diversity, innovation, and intelligence that makes QUEST such an exceptional community to be a part of. Following the QUESTPress tradition, I reached out to a few newly accepted QUESTees to learn why they are excited for QUEST!
When we were introduced to our “new normal” a year ago, Lauren Filocco, Cohort 17 alumna and owner of OpenBarre Studios in College Park, adjusted her business and led her team as all QUESTees are taught to do: by embracing ambiguity.
Before OpenBarre’s last in-person class on March 16, 2020, Lauren and her team realized they needed to prepare for the pandemic. They spent three weeks prior to the national shutdown filming and editing classes, which allowed them to launch their online classes just 36 hours after closing their studio doors. After gauging clients’ interest in online classes, Lauren’s team determined the features and pricing for their online platform. The pandemic was the precipice for the launch of this year-in-the-making project.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of everyone this year, the University of Maryland and QUEST communities have risen above these obstacles and continually achieved impressive feats. One instance of this resilience is the immense success of Technica, the only all-women and non-binary hackathon at UMD, and now the largest hackathon at the university.
Beyond providing hands-on experience working with real clients, QUEST is a tight-knit community within the University of Maryland. For alumna Kelsey Earle (Cohort 23, Mechanical Engineering ’17), the community was a significant reason why she joined QUEST. To continue this legacy, Kelsey is currently building a community for Black engineering students and alumni at UMD through her latest enterprise, the BTX Foundation.