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Alumni Achievements

Caleb Hug, '04

Majors: Computer Science and Physics

Current Position: Earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hug is now a senior software development engineer with the Microsoft Bing Experimentation Team.

Notable Note: Hug received a fellowship from the National Library of Medicine's medical informatics program, to cover tuition and a living stipend at MIT, where he built on research he began at Whitworth. As an undergraduate, Hug won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for academic excellence in math and science.

Why Whitworth? "When visiting my older brother, who attended Whitworth, I met several faculty members and knew they were people who would help direct me professionally and take the time to get to know me personally. The financial aid package was also important. My financial aid, combined with my jobs working in the computer labs during the school year and programming in the summers, allowed me to graduate with a limited amount of debt."

Whitworth Activities: Association for Computing Machinery Club, Ultimate Frisbee. "I also ran for Associated Students of Whitworth University executive vice president, but I lost by 16 votes (in retrospect, rather fortuitously; this likely gave me more time to study)."

Quote: "Whitworth helped prepare me intellectually and spiritually for MIT. My professors went out of their way to give me experience and to help me succeed. Their support came with the knowledge that success in life is more than success in one's career, and they also provided a great example of service."

Influential Whitworth Experience: Hug was part of a team of students that worked with professors on a project funded by the National Science Foundation. The team researched and developed intelligent software agents to monitor and analyze data in complex medical environments and to support diagnostic and treatment decisions. Hug co-authored two papers on the team's research that were presented at international conferences.

Career Goals: Working in the computer industry for a while; ultimately teaching at a school like Whitworth.

Here's what some other recent Whitworth graduates are doing with their math & computer science degrees:

• Taylor Phillips, '08, works for Cancer Research and Biostatistics, in Seattle, where she is a systems analyst/programmer.

• David Jackson, '11, Cole Wardell, '11, and Brent Unruh, '08, work at Microsoft.

• Phillip Doehle, '10, is completing year-long general Mandarin Chinese studies at Ningxia University, in Yinchuan, China.

• Garrett Hopp, '11, is a software test and process engineer at Agilent Technologies, in Santa Rosa, Calif.

• Stephen Ash, '08, is a software developer and quality engineer for Adobe Systems, Inc., in Seattle, Wash.

• Jeffrey Wheeler, '11 (math and engineering physics double major), is attending graduate school at the Colorado School of Mines.

• David Dixon, '07, and Jacob Quatier, '07, are software developers at Nike Corp., in Beaverton, Ore.

• Jennifer Gimera, '08, works at Lockheed Martin, in Richland, Wash.

• Nathan Johnson, '11, is a pitcher in the Kansas City Royals minor league system.

• Andy Throgmorton, '11, is a quality assurance engineer at NetApp, in North Carolina.

• Nick Maquillan, '08, is a software test engineer at Egencia, in Bellevue, Wash.

• Nicole Starkey, '07, teaches math in the Seattle-Tacoma area.