Amanda Ward has been so consumed with her work, she barely has time to come up for air. She’ll make the time, however, when she walks to the stage tonight at 7:30 to accept her diploma from the University of Idaho Coeur d’Alene.

The senior will walk with 33 other students taking part in the commencement ceremony at North Idaho College. Press columnist Sholeh Patrick will give the commencement speech.

Ward, a computer science major, said she looks forward to the ceremony and the days ahead of her.

“I’m very excited,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of support from my family, and from my school, and from people in the community. It’s really quite an honor.”

Ward technically graduates in August, but the university wanted her to take part in spring semester’s walk. Besides, she’ll likely be too busy over the next few years to take a night off, as she rolls over into her master’s thesis.

“I’ve been fortunate to be part of this work,” Ward said. “I feel like I’m helping contribute to something bigger.”

“We’re all very proud of her,” said Katie Marshall, Marketing and Communications Manager for the university’s Coeur d’Alene campus. “We’re proud of all our graduates. They’ve been such an inspiration to us this year. It’s great to see when a student has been inspired by the work.”

The work, Ward said, hasn’t always been easy for women to find. A shortage of female STEM students inspired her to start a Women In Computer Science club when she studied at North Idaho College.

“I think it’s not just the future of work for women,” she said. “I think it’s the future of work in general. There will be more and more opportunities for women in this field. It’s a critical part of our future.”

The sheer lack of women interested in the program forced her to abandon the project, driving forward to marshall toward her bachelor’s. Now, the soon-to-be graduate will use her knowledge to keep pushing the limits of underwater observation. Ward has spent this last year working primarily with submersible drones in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“Underwater navigation is incredibly challenging,” she said. “[The underwater environment] makes it very hard to map, and we can’t use GPS, so we have to get creative to study the water below the surface.”

Through a 20-hour-per-week professor-mentor program and the wintertime donation from 360 Fitness for pool time, Ward has worked with three drones — a 50-pound vehicle nicknamed Catfish, a 25-pound drone named Sunfish and the smallest in the fleet, nicknamed Minnow and currently sitting in her bathtub — to measure the health of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s waters. Her master’s work will continue that research.

Ward said she doesn’t know what position she’ll take when she eventually receives a graduate degree, but she admitted she’s not worried.

“That’s the great thing about a computer science degree,” she said. “It’s such a malleable field of study. Whatever I end up doing, I know my field is something that isn’t going away.”

The ceremony begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Boswell Hall Schuler Performing Arts Center at North Idaho College. The President’s Office will host a private reception afterward.