2026-08-25: A Year with the Computer Science Graduate Society at ODU - Events, Leadership, and Lessons

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The Computer Science Graduate Society (CSGS) was founded in 2019 by Eleni Adam and Yasha Ravindra as the primary student body representing both master’s and PhD students in Computer Science at Old Dominion University. CSGS helps students navigate their graduate programs while serving as a bridge between the student body and the department. Its mission is to enrich the academic, professional, and social experiences of master’s and doctoral students while building a supportive community where members can grow personally and professionally throughout their graduate journey.

I served as CSGS President during the 2025/26 academic year. Taking on that role alongside my responsibilities as a graduate student gave me a different perspective on what it means to lead a student organization while balancing research, coursework, responsibilities as a teaching assistant, and a dissertation. I wanted to reflect on that experience here, not simply as a record of what we did, but as an honest look at what graduate student leadership actually involves.

The CSGS Committee: Who We Were and What We Set Out to Do

Most CS graduate students at ODU spend much of their week within a specific lab, working with a particular advisor on a particular research problem. CSGS exists to create opportunities for students to step outside that environment and connect with peers they might not otherwise encounter. That idea shaped much of what we did throughout the year.

We organized informational workshops, held social events, supported students with conference travel, and remained available to listen to their concerns. We also made a deliberate effort to keep CSGS active online and strengthen its social media presence. This was particularly important because many incoming students first learn about CSGS online before attending an event.

The 2025/26 officers were:

Events of the 2025/26 Academic Year

Across Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, CSGS organized seven events, ranging from social gatherings and career development sessions to a week-long hackathon. These events gave students opportunities to connect, learn, and engage beyond their individual research groups.

CSGS Welcome Gathering: Fall 2025

This was my first event as President, and the entire committee was there to help. The gathering welcomed students to the new academic year, and we gave a brief introduction to CSGS and what we do. We provided lunch, held raffle draws, and welcomed the department Chair, our Advisor, and several other faculty members. We also explained the conference travel funding offered by CSGS and walked students through the application requirements.

Code to Career: Navigating the CS Job Market

For this session, we invited two guest speakers: Samantha Koenig from the Center for Career & Leadership Development and Jared Sykes from the ODU Visa Office. They discussed job market strategies, CPT and OPT guidance, resume building, and the campus resources available to students navigating these processes. The session was both informative and engaging, and it addressed questions that many graduate students eventually face.

Trick-or-Research 2025

Trick-or-Research (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021) is a departmental tradition that gives undergraduate students an opportunity to meet CS faculty and graduate students in their labs and learn about the research being conducted across the department. The event takes place on October 31, so each lab also decorates its space around a Halloween theme. 2025 marked the seventh annual event, and we worked closely with faculty, the CS Office, ACM-W, and ACM to organize it.


CSGS Graduation Party: Fall 2025

The graduation party was the largest event CSGS organized during Fall 2025 and was held at the CAVE Auditorium. Planning the event required us to keep track of attendance, order graduation gifts and cords in advance, and manage registration to keep everything organized. We individually recognized both MS and PhD students graduating that semester, and each graduate received a gift and graduation cord. Faculty participation was also strong, and we concluded the event with lunch for everyone who attended. Taking the time to recognize graduates together gave us an opportunity to celebrate what they had accomplished and the contribution they had made to our community.

CSGS Welcome Event & Guest Speech: Spring 2026

The Spring welcome event followed a format similar to the Fall gathering, but the highlight was our guest speaker, Dr. Michele Weigle. She is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean of the Graduate School. Before moving into that role, she served as the Graduate Program Director for CS PhD students. Dr. Weigle spoke about her own journey from graduate student to Associate Dean and shared practical advice based on that experience. Inviting a speaker at that level was a deliberate choice. Students do not often get the chance to hear directly from someone who has been through graduate school themselves and later gone on to shape graduate education at the university.

CSGS Hackathon: Spring 2026 (2nd Edition)

The CSGS Hackathon was the most involved event we organized during the year and the most demanding to coordinate. The first CSGS Hackathon, held in 2024, included only MS and PhD categories. This year, we expanded the competition to include an undergraduate category, which significantly increased the scale of the event. Teams of two to three students competed within their respective categories: undergraduate, MS, or PhD. The event began with an online inauguration and concluded with in-person presentations at the CAVE. Each team was required to submit a codebase and project report and present their work on the final day.

Organizing a week-long event while also being a full-time graduate student was genuinely challenging. Our secretary, Kumushini, was involved from the beginning and helped with nearly every aspect of the event, which made the task list much more manageable. Sandeep and Varsha also wanted to participate in the hackathon themselves, so they temporarily stepped back from their committee responsibilities during the event. Anton, Roshni, and Ayngaran had graduated the previous semester, leaving a relatively small group to organize a large event. We were doing this alongside our own TA and RA responsibilities and coursework.

Despite those constraints, we were able to make the event successful. We also provided T-shirts to all hackathon participants, thanks to the support of Sandeep and Dr. Lesley Green, Associate Dean of the College of Sciences. We inaugurated the hackathon on March 23. During the inauguration, we explained the rules and expectations and released the problem statements. Teams selected and submitted their project titles that same day and then had seven days to complete their projects. Presentations and evaluations took place on March 31.

The winning team in each category received Sony headphones. Thanks to generous support from Dr. Ravi Mukkamala through the department, every participating undergraduate team also received a pair of headphones, not just the winning team.

Judging was handled by Dr. Vikas, Dr. Lusi Li, and Dr. Pratip Rana, all three of whom served as judges for the second consecutive year. They were supportive and flexible throughout the process. We received more teams than expected, which meant that judging took longer than planned, but all three judges stayed until the very end to complete the evaluations.

The Winners:

Category Team Project
Undergraduate RNCS Campus Food Waste Tracker & Smart Redistribution Planner [Code, Report]
MS CodeNova Multimodal Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Cultural Heritage Archives [Code, Report]
PhD Attention Bros Privacy-Preserving AI: Navigating the Utility, Privacy, and Fairness Triangle [Code, Report, Blogpost]

ODU CS Graduation Reception: Spring 2026

CSGS played a smaller role in this event. Since the department was already organizing the Spring Graduation Reception, our committee decided not to hold a separate CSGS graduation event. Instead, we co-sponsored the gifts and supported the departmental event.

Conference Travel Funding

Throughout the year, CSGS provided conference travel support to five students. We followed the established funding rules and processed requests on a first-come, first-served basis. Two of the students we supported also wrote about their conference experience in a trip report.

Support That Made It Possible

None of the work described above would have been possible without the people who supported CSGS throughout the year. Our advisor, Dr. Vikas Ashok, attended every event we organized. Dr. Ravi Mukkamala, the department Chair, also supported CSGS from the beginning of the academic year. He helped us secure gifts for the hackathon and attended events whenever his schedule allowed.

Our Graduate Program Directors, Dr. Michele Weigle, Dr. Lusi Li, and Dr. Yaohang Li, also supported our efforts by inviting us to new student orientations to introduce CSGS to incoming students. They also included us in Trick-or-Research.

The CS Office staff helped with the logistics for our events. Graduate program assistants Allegra and Amber, along with graduate assistants Roshith, Aashritha, and Rishikesh, helped with email communication with graduate students, printouts, utensils, carts, and other event-related tasks.

Looking Back: What I Would Tell Others

To anyone considering extracurricular work in graduate school: During my high school and undergraduate years in Sri Lanka, I had several opportunities to work with student organizations. However, working with CSGS was a different experience, both in terms of its structure and the expectations placed on the committee. In Sri Lanka, I often worked with many capable and willing students, but we had to put considerably more effort into raising funds for events. At ODU, I found that when budget requests were prepared properly by the previous committee, the society generally had a reasonable amount of funding available through SGA and SET. The greater challenge was finding enough people willing to take responsibility for the work itself.

That difference is understandable. Graduate research already occupies a significant part of a student's time, and taking on additional responsibilities can be difficult. Still, working with CSGS was rewarding. It gave me the opportunity to meet people I would not otherwise have interacted with and exposed me to different ways of working with academic departments and external organizations.

It also gave me practical experience that I would not have gained from research alone. I learned how to work within US university procedures, coordinate people with different schedules and levels of availability, and make decisions when there was limited time or information. Representing a group of graduate students also requires a different kind of communication than representing yourself as a researcher. You have to consider different perspectives, communicate decisions clearly, and sometimes find a solution that works reasonably well for everyone rather than simply choosing what you would prefer yourself.

Working with a small committee could be challenging because more responsibility naturally falls on fewer people. At times, you simply have to do whatever is necessary to get things done. But that also creates a genuine sense of personal satisfaction. You can see the direct results of the work you put in.

These experiences also made me more comfortable communicating with people outside my immediate research group and helped me build relationships with faculty, staff, and other students across the department. I expect those skills to remain useful beyond graduate school, particularly when coordinating projects, working with collaborators, organizing academic activities, or taking on leadership responsibilities.

In the end, extracurricular involvement is not just another line on a CV, at least not when you genuinely invest in the work and take the responsibility seriously.

To the committees that come after: Plan your event dates early and book the CAVE well in advance. Keep SET rules, points, and standards in mind throughout the year rather than waiting until a deadline approaches. Apply for funding responsibly so that the committee that follows you is also in a strong position to operate.

Discuss important matters as a committee, and be willing to say what you actually think. Do not leave things unsaid and assume that everyone is aligned. Set goals that are practical and achievable, and make sure the committee has the time and resources to follow through on them.

Finally, whatever rules you establish for conference funding, apply them consistently. This is one area where students can become frustrated quickly if the process appears inconsistent or unclear.

Closing

Looking back, I think we did a good job this year. We tried to maintain the standard that Sandeep and his committee had established before us, and we received positive feedback from the department Chair and other faculty along the way. We managed the budget carefully and made the necessary requests so that the incoming committee will have more resources than we had. We also conducted interviews to appoint a strong group of people to lead CSGS next year.

None of this was the work of one person. It was the result of a small committee doing a lot with limited hands, and I am grateful to everyone who contributed, showed up, and took responsibility when it mattered.

To the incoming CSGS leadership, good luck, and keep it going.


– Rochana Obadage

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