Math Major Completes Compelling Data Science Internship

Jovana Mitic ’23 (Nisbet Honors) got to combine two of her loves, math and swimming, during her summer internship at Camp Kippewa in Maine.

Jovana spent her mornings at the camp giving swimming lessons and her afternoons using her data science skills to support the camp’s marketing and advertising efforts.

With Assistant Professor of Math, Dr. Amanda Mangum as her mentor, Jovana and Dr. Mangum custom-designed this internship to be geared towards more hands-on experience in the specialized field.

Jovana said, “One of my projects was to help marketing and advertising efforts of Camp Kippewa using the results of a trained tree and explore results of a trained tree with limitations to avoid overfitting.”

Jovana credits the knowledge gained from Converse classes Data Science I and II, along with support from her professor and camp mentor as the keys to successfully completing her internship. Jovana said skills she learned in class, from visualizing and cleaning the data, to effectively presenting the results, allowed her to navigate her internship confidently.

Jovana spoke about the importance of being flexible and adaptable in the workplace. “My initial project was very different than what I ended up doing,” Jovana said. “The culture of the camp helped me realize how important it is to understand the goals of the organization you are working with.”

Jovana will be virtually presenting research from her internship at the Nebraska Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics in 2022.