Concordia's new programming team director Ian Kollipara excited to "give back to a program and a school that has done so much"

by Hope Nelson

Seward, NE (08/26/2024) — Ian Kollipara '23 was originally drawn to Concordia University, Nebraska because he wanted to be an elementary school teacher. With a deep Lutheran heritage - including a grandfather and four uncles who are Lutheran pastors - and years of experience being taught in Lutheran schools, Kollipara is no stranger to Lutheran education. During his time at Concordia, he double majored in elementary education and computer science with a mathematics minor, earned a Lutheran Teacher Diploma, and received an Information Technology certification.

"Needless to say, it was an incredibly busy schedule that required a lot of substitutions, replacements, and summer courses to fit into four years," Kollipara said. "But both departments, computer science and education, were incredibly accommodating and willing to make it work for me, which I deeply appreciated."

Starting this fall, Kollipara will be returning to Concordia's campus in yet another new role - not as a student, or as an assistant programming coach, as he was for the 2023-24 school year, but as a full-time instructor in the computer science department and the director of the programming team. He says what he's most looking forward to about the role is being able to give back to the university.

"As a staff member, I feel called to support the department and school that supported me," he said. "I had helped out last year with the programming team as an assistant coach, but I felt that there was more I could do. In this new role, I am in a position to do more, and I am excited to do more."

Immersing himself further into the Concordia community as a full-time staff member also excites Kollipara, and he's looking forward to the year ahead. "I'm most excited to work with students to discover what parts of computer science excites them the most. I'm excited to compete and watch our students grow. However, I'm most excited to give back to a program and school that has done so much for me."

He also hopes that his unique educational background will help him reach students and allow them to understand the intricacies of programming and computer science.

"During my education at Concordia, I learned quite a bit about two seemingly unrelated subjects: primary education and computer science. Hopefully, my education background enables me to present all this information in a way that students can understand and do something with."

This information, he said, includes complex topics like Web development, distributed systems, algorithms, and more. Kollipara's knowledge of the field, acquired both from Concordia's talented computer science professors and independently through his own study, he looks to share with students in a way that will add a new perspective to the ones they're getting in other classes.

Finally, Kollipara looks forward to sharing his faith in the classroom.

"Faith is something central to my life and something I consider each and every day," he said. "My experiences in theology classes from my time in the classroom to my own personal life have shown how important and impactful faith is to me."

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