COMMITMENTS
I am committed to achieving the excellence of a whole person enriched by the integration of my oriental heritage and other traditions in the world.

I am dedicated to

• critically integrating different forms of knowledge and wisdom while selectively preserving and promoting the oriental heritage; seek to answer not only "What is" but also "What should be," and pursuit not only the acquisition but also the creative and humane use of knowledge;
• a rigorous and imaginative search for knowledge and truth, a rigid belief in people as the greatest source of learning, a respect for individuals, and a promotion for diversity;
• a high standard of academic and technical excellence; seek not only solutions but also problems; exercise freedom of inquiry, freedom of expression, "can-do-better" attitude and self-competitiveness;
• serving family, society and country, respectively in that order, with uncompromising honesty and integrity.

 

• During the Louisiana Stimulus for Excellence in Research (LASER) program (August 1994 - August 1995), I supported Dr. Messa in the development of LODA (Library of Object-Oriented Data Abstraction) as he was developing a CASE tool for database programming.  In addition to technical knowledge, I acquired self-learning, self-disciplined and self-independent skills.  Solving problems is not merely arriving at a solution; it is rather a constant search for answers to the questions "What to do" and "How to do it better."  It requires an unwavering commitment to explore and to make mistakes.  Assisting the professors on their own research, I discovered my motivations: my curiosity and my desire to be the best.
• A continuance of the LASER program, the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program (July 1996 - August 1996) gave me the opportunity to conduct my own research on the rule modeling aspect of database development.  I extended the CASE tool to include the capability of modeling database rules.  My work yielded encouraging results - the technical report "Graphical Representation and Storage Issues in Object-Oriented Rule Modeling," of which I was the lead author, was published and presented at the 35Th Annual ACM Southeast Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  This professional recognition both inspires and fortifies my interests in attending a higher education in which my commitments will be challenged and tested.

PLAN FOR GRADUATE WORK
I remember vividly my first programming experience: a very simple program used to calculate the area of a triangle given the coordinates of its vertices.  It was written in Pascal on an old 386 machine.  It has been six years since then, but one question remains in my mind: "What else can I do with this fascinating machine?"  I want to know, to the deepest level, what constitutes the greatest machine that mankind has ever invented.  And I want to push it to the limit, to see it solving real-world problems.

During my work and study, I have seen technologies at play: the distributed computing system, database and networking development at Sprint Corporation, the machine control framework at AG Associates, and not to mention the explosion of the Internet.  For these reasons, I would like to first focus on the Systems emphasis, which would provide me a good understanding of the technologies behind the scene, and then I want to cross into the Real-World Computing specialization.  The knowledge in both areas – Systems and Real-World Computing – would help me better utilize the power of computing in my search for solutions to practical problems in life.