At Centennial College, we enable our students to make positive change in the world, no matter the career they’re in. This was the case with Vrushali Pachchigar, a graduate of our Software Engineering Technology Fast-Track program. During her time in the program, she started development on an app called Pawsibilities, designed to make pet adoption easier. And its development went so well, that she’s now working to bring it live post-graduation. Here’s how she got into Software Engineering, and how it led to Pawsibilities.
From India to Canada
Vrushali’s interest in Software Engineering first came from other members of her family.
"I got a lot of insights from family members who were in the field," she says. "I made sure that it would provide me with financial stability, and options so that I can see exactly what kind of developer I wanted to be." This led to her taking a Bachelor’s for four years in India, learning more about the field, before deciding she wanted to go abroad for further learning.
"During that time, I got to know more about the field, and that's the reason I decided to be a software engineer," she says. "So, after my bachelor's, I thought, I want to study further. I heard about Centennial College because I was friends with three alumni."
"I found it very interesting that I could learn mobile application to web development," she says about what she learned about our Software Engineering program. "Apart from that, I could also learn data analytics and data warehousing, just to name a few things. But the most important thing was that it was providing me with a program, because coming into Canada, as long as you have even four to eight months of Canadian experience, it's easier for you to get a job."
Practical Software Experience
"The program taught me more than what I studied back home, within just two years," Vrushali says about her time in Software Engineering. A big part of the reason for this was the program’s emphasis on practical capstone project to finish off each course.
"In every subject, we had projects at the end of the course," she says. "For the last semester, we had about four or five different capstone projects that I worked on. I was given assignments to do that were always about developing an app or website or finding bugs in it, and just making sure that I'm getting the hands-on experience of what I was being taught in the course."
"But the most practical hands-on learning was when I got into the Co-Op program, and I was able to work at the Ministry of the Attorney General within Tribunals Ontario," she says. "I was a system Support Officer, and I did both my Co-Ops there. In a Canadian company, I got to see how the work culture is, which was quite different from how we did work back in India."
Pawsibilities
"Pawsibilities was the very first project that I had in semester one when I started school," Vrushali explains. "It was just a basic subject of system design, so I didn't create an app at that point, but I did create a design for the system, what it would look like, what the users for the system are, and how we could generate revenue. I potentially built the app so that I could get it to market someday. Then, I came into my last semester, when we had to do a software development project. I had to develop an application, and I pitched my idea, and all my team members agreed. We got guidance from the professor, and then we got started working on the app."
"Basically, Pawsibilities is a pet adoption app," she says. "I’ve seen a lot of crimes happening against animals, and it truly broke my heart, so I wanted to do something. Here in Canada, people just go and drop their pet at a pet shelter. I wanted to do something more, so I connected pet owners directly with potential adopters. Once you go on the app, you sign up as a pet owner or pet adopter, and then if you're a pet owner and you can't take care of your pet anymore, you indicate financial or health related circumstances, and just post your pet on the app. If I'm an adopter, I would click on that and see if I'm interested. There’s an "interested" button at the side that lets the owner know they have a potential adopter interested in your pet, and then they can communicate with each other and go forward from there."
"Technology-wise, the one thing I learned that helped me the most was integrating Amazon Web Services, which is a cloud technology," she continues. "So when a person uploads the details of their pet, the image gets stored into AWS S3, which is just a storage service. I also integrated Recognition, which is an AI model which recognizes the objects in an image, if it's a dog, if it's a cat, if it's a parrot, and then based on that, it fills the form for the user."
"Pawsibilities was one of the most important projects for me, and then as it started coming along, I was like, why not just take it live? Because eventually that became the end goal," Vrushali says. "It's a cross-platform application for iOS and Android mobile as well. We are hoping to make it live, and then hoping that people use it and are able to adopt pets without any cost. I'm just hoping it can change a pet's life."
For those following in her footsteps
"Pay attention in class, regularly attend the lectures, even if it seems boring," Vrushali says, as advice to future students. "If you pay attention, that skill or that specific topic will help you somewhere in your life going forward, which happened to me."
"If you feel like you're getting stuck, just go ahead and ask the professor," she continues. "For me, the professors took time out of their schedule, and I discussed this project with a lot of professors within different subjects, because I was using all their technologies in one. So just go ahead and ask your professor if you are facing any issues."
"Most of all, just enjoy coding," she says. "As long as you do that, you are good to go."
By: Anthony Geremia