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Internship gave 2022 MSU Texas graduate a springboard for career
Growing up in Archer City, Allyson Warren loved opportunities to visit Midwestern State University for events. And after choosing to attend her hometown university and excelling throughout, she was thankful for all the opportunities provided to expand her horizons and set up her career.
Warren relished the chance to learn and experience something new with Study Abroad, and then, before her senior year at MSU Texas, she applied for an internship with Barrios Technology. The result has been a rewarding career as Warren recently earned the Gold Bear Award at the aerospace company in Houston.
“The Barrios internship was an incredible experience throughout the entire summer that really valued and prioritized exposing college students to the aerospace industry,” Warren said. “One part of the experience that is offered is being able to visit and learn about the different areas of NASA while working in Houston. We got to see places like Mission Control and the Neutral Buoyancy Lab throughout the summer as part of the program. I got to meet and speak with people who were working on amazing systems and research while assisting with different projects. It is a genuinely great internship experience that has value beyond just working at a company throughout the summer.”
Barrios Chief Strategy Officer Ginger Kerrick Davis, a former Texas Tech University System regent, hopes future MSU Texas students will also pursue that internship.
Warren said she has many great memories from studying at MSU Texas, including studying abroad in London. “It was an incredible experience I still think about often. Getting to visit Bletchley Park in London, which holds a lot of historical significance in the technical world, had a huge impact on me,” she said.
Warren currently works on building software integration and automation tools for Barrios. Learning is something she embraces, and her position has given her opportunities to grow her technical skills. The company said she has introduced innovative methodologies, led API integration efforts, and mentored fellow developers, which earned her the recent Gold Bear Award.
In college, her favorite classes included operations research with Jeff Hood in the mathematics department, as well as human computer interaction with Catherine Stringfellow, and spatial databases with Terry Griffin for computer science. She is also grateful for professors Mika Morgan, Tina Johnson, and Nelson Passos.
Warren earned her Bachelor of Science from McCoy College of Science, Mathematics & Engineering summa cum laude in December 2022. She had taken to computer science and technology as a kid, she said. “I started programming since I was a freshman in high school and became very invested in the field right away,” Warren said. “Technology and math classes have always been my favorite subjects to learn about. I knew for a long time I wanted to work and build with computers, but I didn’t know where it would take me until toward the end of my college career.”
Attending events at MSU Texas, such as Math, Science & U Girls Conference and UIL competitions, played a significant role in making MSU a comfortable choice for Warren. “These events also helped influence a lot of my future interests in science and technology,” she said.
Morgan’s influence on Warren began long before she enrolled at the university. “Before she was a computer science professor at MSU Texas, she was my high school computer science teacher, and a lot of my memories starting out in the field, getting to code were created and supported by her. I have a lot of fond memories from when I was a teenager, sitting in her classes and building a video game, or getting to attend the UIL state computer science competition. Coming from a small town in Texas, having that encouragement and connection made the experience deeply meaningful, and by the time I graduated and started attending MSU Texas, I had gained a lot of core skills that helped me expand my career beyond what I had ever expected it to be. She joined the MSU computer science department’s staff at the beginning of my junior year and continued to be someone I relied on. Her guidance shaped much of my life today.”
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