Dietrich Student Explores Interdisciplinary Education

Owen Gometz chose Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences because it allowed him the flexibility to carve out an academic path that reflected his scholarly interests and career aspirations.

Now a junior studying information systems and minoring in statistics, he wanted to explore business and combine this education with other technical disciplines.

Driven by Entrepreneurial Vision

“My dad owns his own business, and so I always thought that it’d be really cool to be a self-starter, to make decisions of my own and to contribute to the strategic thinking that is behind the product,” said Gometz.

He chose to pursue a major in information systems because he wanted to focus on building his skills in terms of creating a product while also retaining a business-focused curriculum and user-centric design principles. 

“Information systems is extremely useful for people who may not know what they want to do after graduation,” said Gometz. “It a great introduction to tech product management, technical consulting, software engineering or even data analytics.”

Innovation through Collaboration

One course in particular, 15-112: Fundamentals of Programming, gave Gometz the technical introduction to various programming languages he was seeking. With this knowledge, he was able to hone his passion of building and creating.

“What gets me motivated to stay up late doing work is not balancing a spreadsheet, it’s understanding the potential benefits that the end user might end up realizing,” said Gometz.

He also credits course 67-443: Mobile Application Development in iOS, which takes a team-based approach to create an app that achieves a level of feasibility, desirability and viability. During the course, Gometz created a guitar learning app for beginners.

“I'd consider myself an advanced guitarist and have used several guitar-related apps,” he said. “With this knowledge, my team and I brought together the tools that we believe go unnoticed and unsupported in the market in a gamified, motivating platform.”

Gometz and his team presented the final product to a panel of executives from Capital One, a class sponsor. Out of over 20 teams, His team came in third place and received a cash prize.

“The biggest value I got from the class was thinking in a user-centric way in knowing that an idea is not only technically sound but also fulfills a real need and would survive in industry,” said Gometz. 

Words of Wisdom for Future Scholars

In looking forward to his senior year, Gometz encourages all incoming students to stay open and be willing to take risks and make mistakes.

“It’s really easy to feel like you need to have a certain set of circumstances to succeed professionally,” he said. “It’s really important to put things in perspective.”