By Shandana Mufti

The first year of college can be a daunting time: new campus, new friends, new things to study and discover. For Alice Kotowski (BSCS ‘19/’20), settling into Northeastern meant discovering a passion for computer science and a home in Northeastern’s musical theatre group, NU Stage.

“I made an effort to find musical theatre on campus because I knew that it’s such a big part of my life,” Alice, who has been doing musical theatre since eighth grade, says. I can’t live without it.”

Alice has been an active member of NU Stage since her first semester, and has appeared in two musical revues so far. She performed four numbers during the fall revue, and two in the spring revue. One of the songs she performed in the spring, “Sweet Liberty,” was from Jane Eyre: The Musical. “It’s Jane’s big moment where she expresses her frustration about sexism, her desire to be free, and her hopes for women’s rights in the future,” Alice explains. “The song was an emotional challenge as much as it was a vocal challenge, and I loved working on my acting through song, as well as developing my middle register.”

Though she says that she’d initially worried that integrating into the tight-knit groups that form between musical theater casts would be a difficult process, Alice found herself surrounded by a community eager to welcome her and make sure she felt included. All of the productions put on by NU Stage are entirely student-run and student-led. Another first year student served as the group’s music director. “It’s very freshman-inclusive,” Alice says.

While getting involved in musical theater was a deliberate choice made by Alice, ending up a computer science major happened almost by accident. When she visited Northeastern as an admitted student, her father, an engineer, wanted to explore the computer science building and speak with CCIS staff and faculty about the program. At the time, Alice was undeclared. She met Associate Dean Doreen Hodgkin that afternoon, who gave Alice a book about computer science and encouraged her to take some classes in the fall if she enjoyed the book.

“It was some fateful event because I loved it so much and I don’t know if I would’ve gotten into it or thought to get into it if I hadn’t had that push,” Alice says. After her first semester, she was a computer science major.

To Alice, computer science and musical theater are far from polar opposites. “They’re both extremely creative,” she says. “People generally don’t see computer science as a creative outlet and see it as more robotic – like 00110 – but no, you’re solving problems and there’s so many different ways to solve those problems. They’re not mutually exclusive.”