The ITS Privacy Office has grown younger, a bit wiser, and a whole lot more creative by adding two fantastic student contributors to the team in the past year. They have applied skills from their academic work and pumped up student outreach with their fresh perspectives.
Tabassum Chowdhury, User Experience (UX) Design major in the School of Information, joined the team as an intern in the summer of 2025. She jumped right in by applying her UX skills to a Safe Computing website refresh - analyzing user needs, providing feedback on wireframes, and more. Tabassum has stayed on with the team through her senior year, continuing to demonstrate an artistic touch and keen understanding of UX design as she helped enhance the Safe Computing Challenge for students.
Tabassum’s minor in writing and her creativity have been tremendous assets in writing communications, Safe Computing articles, and promotional materials for multiple awareness campaigns. To cap it off, she is taking the lead on Unveil, the first-ever privacy-themed U-M student art contest. She is making connections across ITS and the university, developing new website functionality, and expanding outreach to students. If you attend athletic events, look for her on the sidelines, behind a giant camera lens, capturing amazing moments as a Big Ten Network freelance photographer. After graduating, Tabassum and her gray cat hope to stay in Michigan and find a position in employing UX design, communications, and/or project management skills (the cat plans to snooze).
Kate Hurley joined the Privacy Office as a student employee in the fall of 2025, and by December, she was a published author of an article in Educause about The Paradox of AI Assistance. She is also a senior in the School of Information, completing a B.S. in UX design as well as a minor in business. She supports Privacy Office leadership by creating and maintaining a curated list of privacy-related news. She tapped into her own news resource to write the News Round Up article in this newsletter. Kate also spent time researching privacy challenges impacting K-12 education and AI governance occurring at state, federal, and international levels. She contributed her knowledge to the development of a student course on Learning with GenAI.
In her free time, Kate enjoys working out and playing sports. She’s on three intramural teams this semester - soccer, basketball, and volleyball! After completing her degree in May, she hopes to travel abroad in the summer and then work in the tech industry, while preparing to apply to law schools or to graduate public policy programs.
Tabassum Chowdhury and Kate Hurley embark on their next adventures with portfolios highlighting their talents and the real-world skills they enhanced while making their mark as contributing team members in the Privacy Office.