Yusra Ashar.
Full-stack engineer
in progress.
Computer Science B.S. candidate at California State University, Monterey Bay, graduating 2026. I work across the stack — React, Node, and MySQL on the front end and data layer, C and C++ closer to the metal — with coursework spanning software engineering, databases, operating systems, networks, algorithms, and data science.
Computer Science B.S. — CSUMB
The CSUMB Computer Science degree is an upper-division program that takes students from foundational programming through the full breadth of the discipline and ends in a team-built capstone. The pathway is deliberately sequenced: professional and ethical practice first (CST 300), then the core technical stack — software design, operating systems, databases, networks, web development, algorithms, and data science — followed by software engineering in a team setting, a service-learning course on equity in technology, and finally two terms of capstone planning and delivery.
My pathway is 14 courses across six terms, from Fall 2024 through Summer 2026. Every course has its own page below with the CSUMB catalog description, learning outcomes, and the project or evidence I produced.
What I can do coming out of it
- Build and ship full-stack software. Design a relational schema, expose it through an API, and put an accessible interface on top of it — then document and deploy it.
- Work close to the system. Reason about processes, memory, concurrency, and network behavior in C and C++, and debug performance where the abstraction leaks.
- Choose the right algorithm and defend the choice. Analyze efficiency, and apply divide-and-conquer, dynamic programming, and greedy strategies deliberately.
- Engineer as part of a team. Turn requirements into specifications and UML designs, run Agile sprints, review others' code and documents, and coordinate delivery.
- Work with data and communicate it honestly. Clean and explore real datasets, model them, and explain what the results do and do not support.
- Think about impact. Assess the ethical and equity consequences of technical decisions, informed by primary research and community practice.
Where I'm headed
- Near term. Land a software engineering role — internship or new grad — on a team building full-stack products, where I can keep working across the API and data layer.
- Through graduation. Ship the ComicSeen capstone as team coordinator and deliver the Notification System Refactor end to end.
- Technical depth. Go deeper on backend architecture and distributed systems, building on the operating systems and networking foundation from my pathway.
- Longer term. Pursue graduate study in computer science, continuing the research thread I started in CST 462S on how people come to trust or distrust AI systems.
- Craft. Keep the design sensibility from CST 328 in my engineering work — interfaces that are accessible and clear, not just functional.
