The IGERT program has exposed me to a wider world than I had previously known. I have participated in projects from other disciplines. For example, in 2002 I worked on a joint Computer Science and Learning and Instruction project known as Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition (CVA) which investigated better ways to model and teach word learning. And right now (June 2003), I am in Bremen, Germany where I am a member of the International Quality Network at the Department of Informatics at the University at Bremen working on an ontology for wayfinding.

In my dissertation, I am planning to write upon ad hoc categories and their relationship to an ontology. An example of an ad hoc category would be _things to take to the beach_. The instances of an ad hoc category seem to have nothing in common other than the fact they are instances of an ad hoc category. Ad hoc categories have not been treated properly within ontology in general, which is why I plan to make this the subject of my dissertation.