Mike Oren.com

This was my 3rd year being nominated for Iowa State's HCI student of the year award (each year I've been here, I've been nominated) and this year I finally won the award (I have a nice plaque to prove it). I finally join the ranks of my friends and colleagues Kim Weaver ('07 winner) and Jeremiah Still ('08 winner). It's not so much that I care about the award as that it was nice, after I was given the award, to be congratulated by a variety of people and to feel like I had really contributed something and that I wasn't just doing things out of my own selfish intersts (since there is often a fine line between my own self-interest and my desires to give back to the community/program). Here's a picture from the award presentation where I am indicating that my victory had 'a little bit' to do with the fact that people think I look like Jack Black:
In other news, the CHI Student Design Competition team from the HCI 521 class that I helped mentor has moved on to the next round of competition (they are in the top 4). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll place in the top 2 (hopefully first) and bring some recognition to Iowa State's HCI program in the process. The end of the semester approaches, so I'll be swamped with work over the next few weeks (including prepping for my summer course and prepping for my mentoring work with the group of Research Experience for Undergraduates that our coming this summer). It'll be a somewhat busy, but fun summer for me. Oh, I also got into the preparing future faculty (PFF) program for the fall, so that'll be another great experience/forum for me to better hone my skills.