The Times

Saturday, May 22, 1976, page 3 (of 28)

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She’s programming a full life for herself

By ANA MARIA ALVAREZ Staff Writer "There is much more to computer science than math and machines," said Mary Beth Cross, a South Dade resident and a systems and information science engineering student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "You can be very creative with computers," she said. "We have tried composing music with them and the results have been rather interesting," she added. Twenty-year-old Mary Beth, daughter of J. Alan and Mary Cross, 12700 SW 67th Ave., has been very active in the past few years. Her excellent grades at Palmetto Senior High School and at Vanderbilt, her happy disposition and determination to make it in a career once considered "for men only," have all helped. A junior in college, Mary Beth got a job this summer in Georgia as a computer programmer at Proctor and Gambles' Charmin division. "I'm going to be working for the paper you can't squeeze," she joked. The summer between her sophomore and junior year, she was an intern for the Naval Command Systems Support Activity in Washing-ton, D.C. The summer before that she learned how to fly a plane and earned her pilot's license. In between summer activities, she has managed to maintain an A average at Vanderbilt, where she is working towards her degree in computer science. Mary Beth said she owes much of her success to the encouragement she has received from her dad, a certified public account with offices in Coral Gables. After all, it was her father who got her interested in mathematics in the first place. And it was also her father who encouraged her to learn to fly. "Dad called me up at the end of my freshman year in college and asked me if I would like to learn how to fly at Tamiami," she said. "At first I was petrified, but after you get up there, it's lots of fun," she added. As a computer science student in Vanderbilt School of Engineering, Mary Beth still finds herself the only female in some of her classes. "Vanderbilt has the highest percentage of women in engineering in the nation, but I still have classes where I'm the only girl. "At first, many people don't really believe you want to be an engineer, they think you are just in a school to meet guys. But after your junior year — the most difficult one — they know for a fact that you are there because you really want to make it," she said. "I think if you are good and you are a woman you might have the advantage over a man for a job," Mary Beth said. "But many firms don't want to hire women engineers because they are afraid you will get married and pregnant and leave in a few years," she added. In addition to her academic accomplishments, Mary Beth has managed to be active in numerous extracurricular activities at Vanderbilt. She is president of the Engineering Council, chairman of the Student-Faculty Relations Committee and a teaching assistant in freshman calculus, to name just a few. She is also a member of the Association of Computing Machinery, the professional society for computer scientists, Athenians, Tau Beta Pi and still mananges to find time to play the piano. For all students who hate math, here's a cheerful note: Mary Beth admits she hated the subject up until the ninth grade. Mary Beth Cross ... computer science

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Times Guide

Florida's Best Suburban Newspaper Serving Coral Gables and South Dade Since 1926 Published Wednesday and Saturday Gables Publishing Co. 4627 Ponce de Leon Blvd. Coral Gables, Fla. 33146 (305) 666-7981 Price: 10 cents per issue, home delivered; $12.50 per year by mail anywhere in the United States. Application to mail at controlled circulation rates is pending at Miami, Fla. Jim Storey General Manager Bea Moss Managing Editor