Circle of Excellence scholarship winner is blazing into the computer science field

When Marissa Bush was in high school she did an internship in computer science and felt like it was something she wanted to do.

Now the recent Morgan State University graduate is starting a job with Google in July and will eventually move to California once the COVID-19 pandemic calms down. Bush was selected as the Circle of Excellence Scholarship winner by the members of the 2020 Circle of Excellence class.

She said that while computer science has long been a male-dominated field, she’s seen it starting to change the past few years. “I’ve seen a lot more women coming into the computer science program,” Bush said. “computer science vs computer engineering salary”

After her freshman year at Morgan, Bush did an internship at Facebook. She then interned two years with Google, which helped her land her job as a Site Reliability Engineer after graduation. She’s seen what two large technology companies are trying to do in terms of increasing diversity in the field.

“I do see a larger presence,” she said. “I give them props for that.”

She said each summer Google holds its GWE (Google Women Enginers) Summit for the company’s female interns. She’s also attended the Grace Hopper Celebration, billed as the world’s largest gathering of women in technology. She said there were about 40,000 participants when she attended.