Florida Poly students are natural problem solvers.
Just ask Gabriel Hutchison, a junior who applied his Computer Science studies to a problem every college student can relate to: class enrollment.
More specifically, how to coordinate open classes and their specific days and times, a required course load and a schedule outside classes. Gabriel is also a commuter, so it’s helpful to have blocks of classes at the same time to avoid wasting downtime on campus.
That’s all the impetus he needed.
“I don’t have inspiration until I have a problem. Then I want to fix it with programming, or at least reduce the problem,” he says.
His solution was a web-based program that takes the user through a series of choices and presents the optimal schedule based on those preferences. So, for instance, if you like a certain professor, you can arrange to have more classes with him or her. Or, if you really need Tuesday and Thursday afternoons free, the schedule can present those options, too.
Gabriel, of Dade City, developed the program as part of a class, with help from his classmates Lindsay Dibble, Will McCleery and James Wienold. The hard part of development was not the programming as much as creating a user-friendly interface, Gabriel says.
While commercial use might be in the future, for now Gabriel is just happy to share the web app with his classmates as a way to make picking classes just a little bit easier.
“That’s what I like about Florida Poly,” he says. “You’re surrounded by likeminded students who want to solve problems.”
