Khoury News

Align students in Vancouver weren’t sure which classes to take. So they built their own planning app.

Despite having started their CS education only a few weeks prior, and with a strenuous courseload to tackle, a team of master's students still managed to build a tool to help classmates — and themselves — plan their career paths.

August 5, 2025

by Emily Spatz

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Yan-Bo Chen knew what it felt like to be unsure about which courses to take to ensure career success down the road. As a student in Khoury College’s Align program — which allows students without a computing background to earn a CS master’s degree — he wanted a quick and simple way to understand which credits would fulfill his graduation requirements. 

So Chen, along with classmates Yifei Ma, Weihang Ding, Yilin Pan, Sitong Zhang, and Jiuyue Shang, built an app to help out.   

After studying computer science for only a few months — and while juggling 40 to 50 hours of coursework each week — the team created and deployed the Career Pathway Course Planning Application, a tool featuring a drag-and-drop interface that lets students map out classes and align them with potential career paths. Not only did the project help team members apply class concepts, but it also built their teamworking skills and bolstered their resumes.  

“That seed of an idea grew into something much bigger, and that’s where it all began,” Chen said.  

The Career Pathway tool is available to students in the Align and direct-entry CS master’s programs at the Vancouver campus and is designed to expand to the Seattle campus next. 

As is typical for Align students, the teammates had vastly different experiences before they joined the program. Chen had a background in medicine and decided to study computer science because he was interested in how AI and technology could benefit health care. Shang had experience as a product manager. Ma, who holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, spent a few years exploring different career options and ended up taking a course in computer software engineering.  

As first-year Align students, all three — and their other teammates — faced similar challenges. Course planning wasn’t easy and often required meeting with academic advisors or digging through information online. 

“I remember many students were saying they felt unsure because most of us do not have a background in computer science and step into this field to figure out what kind of career path we want to choose,” Chen said.  

After a conversation with Ildar Akhmetov, Khoury College’s director of computing programs in Vancouver, the students decided to tackle the problem head-on, coming up with the initial concept for the Career Pathways application in fall 2024. But as full-time students with limited computer science experience, getting started was challenging. That’s when clinical instructor Neda Changizi stepped in to advise the team. 

“When they came to me, they had already started but were a little lost in terms of how to divide the work and track progress,” Changizi said.  

She began meeting with the team every two weeks, helping them break down tasks and manage their time. She also guided them through the more technical aspects of the project, giving them learning resources and tips on software design. 

“I’m very impressed by how dedicated and enthusiastic they were, especially because they didn’t have to do this,” Changizi said. “This was a very complex project, so it was really impressive how they wanted to make this work.” 

The team began work in the spring, setting up a GitHub-based workflow. They continued meeting every two weeks to discuss goals and accomplishments and to assign tasks.  

“It was definitely challenging, especially at the beginning,” Ma said, adding that the students had disagreements about workflow and how much their project sponsor Akhmetov should be involved.  

“Looking back, thanks to my amazing teammates, none of the challenges seem too overwhelming now,” Chen said. “After we worked through those initial communication differences, the team dynamic became really strong.” 

The students credited the support and encouragement from the university and professors like Changizi with helping them succeed.  

“Having professional support saved us a lot of time because otherwise we would have to do a lot of trial and error before realizing what would be a good approach to teamwork in the context of software development,” Ma said.  

Shang said one of her biggest takeaways from the project was the value of mistakes.  

"You keep making mistakes and you keep learning new things during the process, and this is really rewarding,” she said.  

While the software is currently independent from Northeastern, the team hopes to integrate the tool into university course planning and expand services to other campuses, all as they iron out kinks and design new concepts. After presenting the project to Ben Hescott, Khoury College’s senior associate dean of academic programs and student experience, they emerged with more ideas for integrating co-op and career development opportunities into the tool. 

“We’re trying to expand to other programs, especially within Khoury College, because that’s what we know best,” Ma said. 

“We believe this kind of integration could create a win-win-win scenario for the university, the students, and the administrative teams alike,” Chen said.  

In the meantime, Ma and Chen created their own student interest group called the Project Forge Lab to encourage peers to pursue independent or collaborative projects outside of the classroom. 

“We hope our initiative can inspire many students across different campuses so they can start something similar,” Chen said.  

“We felt like our experiences really contributed to our future, and we want to provide a similar experience to our colleagues,” Ma added, noting that their self-guided project “helped fill the gap between what happens in class and what happens in industry, because very rarely are projects solo.” 

Shang encouraged students to take the leap.  

“Don’t be afraid if you are inexperienced,” she said. “The most important thing is to stay curious, ask for help when you need it, and keep learning.”