Where are Maize’s Graduates Now? – Grant Schoenebeck

Play interviewed Maize alumni Grant Schoenebeck, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, about his life after graduation.

Play: What do you do for a living? 

Schoenebeck: I am an assistant professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Division of the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor.  This means that I do research, teach college courses, and advise graduate students on their research.

P: How did Maize High effect your education?

S: After I arrived at Harvard, I realized that I was more prepared than most students for college.  I think that speaks very highly of Maize, because the students at Harvard often come from the strongest high schools in the nation/world.

P: Where do you live now?

S: I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan with my wife, Sarita, and our son, Moby.  It is good to be back in the Midwest.

P: What is your favorite memory from high school?

S:Some favorite memories include:

1) Mr. Brenneman’s father (who, I believe was a mathematics professor at Tabor) came to give a guest lecture in our calculus class.  He told us about Cantor’s work on the cardinality of infinite sets.  One of the main results here is that, in a very precise way, there are the “same number” of rational numbers as integers, but that there are “more” real numbers than rational numbers.   This turns out to relate very deeply to my current field of study—theoretical computer science.  The number of “problems” that you might want an algorithm for is the same as the number of real numbers.  However, the number of potential algorithms is equal to the number of integers.  Thus, there are more problems than solutions.   Around 1940, Alan Turing showed a particular problem that provably has no solution!

2) I have many memories from choir.  We travelled to Paris and Rome.  On the way, we had to make an emergency landing in Boston, and sang in the airport.  When we got to Paris, we sang in the Notre Dame—until they told us to stop.  I still enjoy listening to the recordings of the music we made together including Rutter’s Gloria, Rutter’s Requiem and the recording of our KMEA (Kansas Music Educators Association) performance.  It was raining the day of the KMEA concert, and we were to meet at the high school to take a bus to Century 2 together.  Dressed in my tuxedo, I ran from my car into the school.  However, when I got to the sidewalk, I could not stop.  I stepped right into the mud (the grass was not grown yet) on the other side.  Sliding through the mud, I barely keep by balance.  In the end, only my shoes were muddy, not my entire tux.  Whew.

3)I was pretty shy with women.  My freshman year, I was at a “Charity Dance”.  I had not yet had the courage to ask a girl to dance.  Unrelatedly, I was lifting weights with the football team and had caught the attention of AJ Blazak who was, at the time, dating Amy Baker, who I also knew from choir.  AJ and Amy were very popular students–the “in” crowd.  Somehow, they figured out my shyness.  Back to the dance.  The last song of the night, was “Unchained Melody”, which was the song I had a solo on in the Fall’s variety show.  Halfway through the song, I finally drummed up the courage to ask a girl to dance–April Anderson.  She said yes, and we started swaying back and forth at arm’s length.  From a short distance away, cheering erupted as AJ and Amy had arrange an impromptu celebration of me finding a dance partner.  Despite the awkwardness, I still felt great.

4) We had a “Chess Club”.  We could not find a teacher sponsor, so we met Friday nights at Jason Kruz’s house, ordered Pizza Hut pizza, watched a movie, and played chess.  One year, our team even placed at the 6A State chess competition.

5) I ran for student council president twice and lost both times.  For my campaign speech one of those times, I played a guitar and sang lyrics that I had rewritten from Beatle’s Songs to be about how I would make a good StuCo president.  I cannot believe I did that.

6) The National Science Olympiad competitions were awesome.  I remember, for example, playing drums with thousands of other participants in the Fields Museum in Chicago; running from event to event on University of Indiana’s campus; seeing the Olympic facilities in Atlanta while at Georgia Tech, and returning from Spokane, Washington and then driving directly to graduation.

P: What college(s) have you attended?

S: I did my undergraduate and Master’s degree at Harvard University (in Math and Computer Science respectively).  I was a von Clemm Fellow at Oxford where I studied theology.  I did my PhD in computer science at University of California Berkeley, and my postdoctoral studies at Princeton University.

P: What have you done for Google?

S: Recently, I received a Google Faculty Award.  The idea of these awards are to promote basic research and to create connections between Google Research and academia.  The proposed research is to understand how we can use on-line social networks to understand properties of the underlying social structure.  People might join an on-line social network (e.g.  Twitter, Facebook, Live Journal) because many of their friends did first.  This means that the on-line social networkis formed by a technology adoption process (called a cascade) over an underlying friendship network structure.  Prior research of mine shows that when this cascade occurs, the underlying friendship network and the on-line social network can “look” very different.  The proposed research is to derive methods to gain insights about the underlying friendship structure by merely looking at the growth of the on-line social network.

P: What advice you you have for current Maize High students?

S: I do not like giving advice too much, in part because I believe different people can pursue very different paths to fulfillment.  However, many students can probably benefit from finding something that they are really interested in, and then pursuing that.  People go far when they are excited and passionate, and anything less seems unsustainable in the long-run.

P: Are their any teachers that have made an impact in your education?

S: Many teachers made a great impact on me.  Mr. Barcomb (Government Honors) was a great teacher.  He was dying of cancer, but still showed up to work.  He always talked about “snow jobs” and how to really argue convincingly in our writing. Mr. May (debate) told us not to complain about poor judges at debates.  As a rule, the judges were volunteers that knew very little about debate; but, I think the point was that this is life—you are often pleading your case against a non-expert party.  They are unbiased, and the rest is up to you!  Mrs. Prater lead us to put on amazing performances.  Mrs. Borrego (sophomore English Class) and Mrs. Patton (AP Lit) were great.  I got a good sense for what makes literature exciting.  The Science Olympiad coaches (Ms. Butel, Mr. Fox., Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Disken, Mr. Hutson) did a phenomenal job; I learned so much preparing for the competitions.

P: Anything else to add?

S: First, it is fun to think back on all the great times I had during high school.  I could have written many pages of “favorite” memories, and many names of people of great significance to me are not included here.  However, I also know that my memory is pretty selective.  I remember the good times much more than the bad.  I do vaguely recall that there was plenty of turmoil and growing up in addition to the highlights.

Second, the other students at Maize also had a big impact on my education.  Especially those that I spent time with in academic competitions.

Finally, looking back, I am always somewhat surprised that I was not picked on in high school for being a nerd/dork.   So thanks for that!