Mikayla Woodward: A Butler Volleyball Player Doing Big Things On and Off the Court

Story by Wyatt Ebersole

Mikayla Woodward is a sophomore defensive specialist for the Butler Volleyball team in her first year as a Grizzly. She transferred to Butler from NCAA Division 2 Minot State University and was a committed member of coach Lisa Lechtenberg's squad. In addition to her job on the court, Mikayla, who is originally from Saskatchewan, Canada, will soon be getting to experience some fantastic academic opportunities off the court and will be truly showing what it means to be a student-athlete.

Mikayla, who is a sophomore computer science major here at Butler, has recently garnered two major educational internships with the Hawkes Math Learning Program that Butler Community College uses to administer many of their math classes. She earned this internship after being recommended by Butler Director of Tutoring Services Cassandra Zeiner. Mikayla qualified for this internship by serving as a student tutoring ambassador and is the head student math tutor here at Butler. In this internship, Mikayla will assist in helping both students and faculty learn to use the actual software that Hawkes provides for the Butler Math Department. After completing this internship, which will last all of the 2023 spring semester, she will receive an official letter of recommendation from Hawkes detailing how she completed the internship and what skills she demonstrated. 

Mikayla's more prestigious internship is one of much national prowess as it is sponsored by tech giant Google and their Hidden Talents Computer Science Research (CSR) program that is ran through only a select few schools around the country, one of which is the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in Golden, Colorado where Mikayla's learning experience will be based. Out of several hundred applicants from schools and programs around the country, Mikayla is one 1 of only 20 applicants who were selected to participate in this exclusive program. Over the course of 10 weeks as a part of this program, she and a computer science graduate student at the Colorado School of Mines will be writing a research paper on their topic of "Human Robot Interaction" that once completed, will be published in a major professional computer research journal that is reviewed and certified by several distinguished computer and information research scientists

Mikayla is doing all of this on top of being a full-time student at Butler and being an active member of the Butler Volleyball team. She is the true embodiment of what it means to be a student-athlete. After Butler, she will be transferring to a four-year school to continue her athletic and academic career.