Only a few short months after adding Lauryn Wilde to the team (take a peek at her self-introduction here when you get a chance), ODH has expanded once more with the addition of its newest member: Spencer Young!
Recently brought on as a full-time member of the WordCruncher team, Spencer has actually been around the office for quite a while! Originally hired as a student employee by Jesse Vincent back in early 2020, Spencer has been working behind the scenes on improving WordCruncher for the last three years. While these three years have seen a lot of changes within the WordCruncher team (farewell Monte Shelley and Jesse Vincent, you will both be missed), they’ve also seen a lot of changes for Spencer personally.
While he may be working as a programmer now and approaching graduation with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Spencer was originally studying linguistics and minoring in French! This was how he first came into contact with Jesse Vincent, and eventually began taking courses in the Digital Humanities minor. Through a presentation for WordCruncher by Jesse Vincent in a LING 110 (Intro to Human Language) course, Spencer was exposed to the program that would now become his main focus. Intrigued by its capabilities, he was pushed to take DIGHT 260 (Tools for Text Processing) the following semester to learn more from Jesse, and from there his path to his current position was set. Through the mentoring and guidance of many people in ODH, Spencer has been able to finish his French minor, as well as a minor in the Digital Humanities (as one might hope/expect of a student employee in the office!), and will graduate in the Fall of 2024.
In his free time, Spencer loves to be active. He’s played soccer all his life and will continue to do so until his knees make him quit! In true computer-scientist fashion, he also loves playing video and board games, and enjoys trying new games his family and friends introduce him to. Additionally, he enjoys looking forward to the newest Marvel and Star Wars media to release, and counts himself lucky to find himself surrounded by like-minded people in the office. So don’t hesitate to stop him for a chat about whatever game you might be playing, or about the most recent episode of whatever is streaming at the time!