When Breanna Powell began thinking about graduate school, she knew she wanted to get more out of the experience than she had in her undergraduate years.
“I didn’t make the most of my time in my bachelor’s program, and there were a lot of opportunities I could have taken advantage of but didn’t,” she said.
After graduating from Central Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature, Powell worked as a paraeducator for the Tahoma School District in Maple Valley, Washington. More than a decade later, she began to think about getting her master’s degree, but this time she would avail herself of all that college has to offer.
“When I decided I was going to back to school, I said, ‘I’m going to do it right. I’m going to get involved in extracurriculars and find a good club to put my time into and make as many friends as I can — and just make a difference,” she said.
Now in her final year as a graduate student in Computer Science & Software Engineering at the University of Washington Bothell, Powell has lived up to her promise. From club and conference activities to a study abroad experience in Germany and an internship at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Powell’s graduate school experience has been one for the books.
“When I decided I was going to back to school, I said, ‘I’m going to do it right. I’m going to get involved in extracurriculars and find a good club to put my time into and make as many friends as I can — and just make a difference.”
Breanna Powell, graduate student, CSSE
Flourishing through extracurriculars
While working as a paraeducator and as a freelance designer for book projects, Powell developed an interest in working with technology. She coached a middle school robotics team as well as a green team devoted to environmental education. Seeing the kids she worked with grow and improve their understanding of technology inspired her to do the same.
“I was so impressed with these young people that I felt like, you know what, I could go back to school. I could learn more about technology and start studying sustainable technology,” she said.
Aa a graduate student at UW Bothell, she discovered the Association for Computing Machinery.
“Doing something extracurricular like what my students were doing, really putting their heart into something, I saw how transformative and rewarding that can be,” Powell said. “So that inspired me to go into the ACM, and I really flourished in that club. I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.”
Powell was a marketing officer in her first year and later became the vice president. Throughout the three years she has served the club in some capacity, she has always shown a dedication to going the extra mile, said Dr. Arkady Retik, associate teaching professor in the School of STEM and ACM adviser.
“She’s an ace,” he said. “Very energetic, a good communicator and a leader. She made others want to join and engage. She was always promoting the club and asking what more she can do, always wanting to make our events — such as the annual Hackathon — bigger and attract more people.”
In the latest hackathon event, he added, Powell was instrumental in forming a coalition with other clubs to draw a record-breaking turnout. “I think she knows things don’t happen for themselves, you have to put in the work,” he said. “She’s always looking to do more, not less, and for that I think she will be very successful.”
Remembering some highlights
Powell said her time at UW Bothell has been filled with activities and new connections, but among the highlights was the opportunity to meet Governor Jay Inslee during his visit to campus on Jan. 26, 2024. Inslee met with several students, and Retik had recommended Powell be one of them.
In the meeting, Powell represented the ACM club as well as the Alliance for Sustainability. Wanting to apply sustainability to the computer sciences, in 2023 she approached A4S club president Faith Lambert, a senior majoring in biology, and then became the club vice president.
“During her time with us and calling on her experiences with ACM,” Lambert said, “she has presented wonderful ideas on how to grow the club and how to make our structure sustainable enough to last after our senior officers graduate.
“Breanna is always active in event planning and execution, attending as many events as her schedule allows,” he added. “I have a lot of trust in the A4S team — and I especially trust Breanna to make sure this club succeeds.”
Another highlight of her graduate experience, Powell said, was the opportunity to travel to Germany, where she spent 10 weeks in the summer of 2023 working alongside four other students to kick off a three-year research project in Bamberg that was part of a “smart cities” initiative. The research involved collecting data and then examining the complex interactions between people and their city’s services. A year later, she presented on the project at a conference in France.
And most recently, Powell said, her internship at the Los Alamos National Laboratory was a major high point to round out her time at UW Bothell.
Gaining real-world experience
Powell first learned about the Los Alamos National Laboratory while attending the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference in 2023. She was part of a group of students from UW Bothell who received a scholarship to attend. When she came across the lab’s booth at the conference, she was drawn to its mission and work, particularly in climate science.
She later applied for some internships, and in summer 2024 embarked on a 10-week computing internship working on the lab’s sea-ice computer model, CICE, with data from the Energy Exascale Earth System Model. In her role, she worked on coding for a sea-ice emulator that shows the freeboard — a proxy for sea ice thickness — across different periods of time and comparing for seasonality.
“These simulations are getting more accurate over time,” Powell said. “The whole idea behind doing this is to see how close we can approximate real life and to continue trying until we do.
“I absolutely loved the project that I worked on and meeting people working in climate science. It was a great team and a great mission,” she said, “and we were all working toward the same goal.”
In addition to the chance to work on modeling software, Powell said the internship offered great opportunities to network and learn more about career pathways to working at the lab — from tours of the archives and decommissioned supercomputers to learning about the lab’s history to a symposium in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she networked with agencies and organizations that intersect with the lab.
“The experience taught me that I could jump into learning just about anything as long as I have the motivation to learn it,” she said.
Passing on her wisdom
As she looks ahead to life after graduation, Powell said she wants to work on climate issues. Most importantly, she hopes to find the right team and culture to join, and she’s keeping her options open as she considers her next step.
She’s also grateful to both her mentors and fellow students for helping her make the most of graduate school experience. And for all those still working toward their degrees or even still years from embarking on their higher education, she has this advice to pass on:
“If you feel like you’re working too hard or you’re not pacing yourself, then take a little bit longer to complete your degree. Don’t push yourself too hard. But at the same time, if you have the time to devote to something extracurricular, go for it,” she said. “Be mindful of your limits, but at the same time push to grow and to expand yourself and what you’re capable of doing.”
