Jeremy B. Merrill

Education

Claremont McKenna College May 2012

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Linguistics
GPA: 3.79/4.00
Awards/Honors: McKenna Scholar (Top 10% of freshman class), 2010 Dean's List (Top 10% GPA)

North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics May 2008

Disney Interactive Media Group, Computational Linguistics Engineer InternMay - Aug. 2011

Prototyped and designed spellchecker algorithms in Python for DIMG's PhraseChat system.
Collaborated with linguistics, engineering and production teams to design and build internal tools in PHP/MySQL for language expert and player support teams.
Analyzed “long tail” of Club Penguin chat logs based on spelling, unique words and other factors.

Claremont Port Side, Senior Reporter, former Web and National EditorApril 2009 - Pres.

Wrote and edited draft articles, mentored writers, managed web production process.
Wrote feature-length articles, conducted research and interviews, collaborated with co-writers.
Increased web traffic 230% over previous fall semester through SEO, social media integration and improving the quality and quantity of content.
Designed and programmed "BudgetViz" HTML5 visualization script for student government budgets with Python and jQuery.

CMC Information Technology Services, Residential Technology Assistant Aug. 2010 - Present

U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Democracy Intern May - Aug. 2010

Co-wrote, edited and researched "Chemical Insecurity" report about dangerous chemical companies' lobbying efforts to oppose chemical security legislation.
Researched lobbying and PAC spending on OpenSecrets.org.
Attended meetings with congressional staff to discuss campaign finance and election reform legislation.

Contactology, Chief Intern June - Aug. 2009

Researched vertical markets in to which Contactology, an email marketing provider, wanted to achieve greater market share in order to more effectively target marketing materials.
Wrote competitor analysis report making specific suggestions to clarify pricing, widen feature set and increase website usability.
Redesigned portions of website for clarity and design best practices; implemented recommendations from competitor analysis. Improved conversion/click-thru rates.
Learned effective sales and marketing techniques.

CMC Instructional Technology Assistant Sept. 2008 - May 2010

Completed faculty materials digitization, video editing, and other instructional technology projects.
Used Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator and Captivate; QuickTime Pro; Final Cut Pro; and others.

Claremont Currents Feb 2009 - Pres.

Founded Claremont Colleges media portal/aggregation site, to share individual college news across 5C (Five College) community and increase writer/publication audience.
Designed Currents using Wordpress Mu, other out-of-the-box tools, as well as original coding and web design.
Collaborated with editors of various on-campus publications (e.g. Claremont Independent and Claremont Progressive) to design, host and advertise their web presences.

CMC Mock Trial Sept. 2009 - Pres.

Served as Vice President of Operations and Team 3 Captain.
Analyzed legal issues and portrayed a team of attorneys and witnesses in a defamation claim (2009) and murder case (2010) mock trial exercise.
Crafted and performed direct a cross examinations, gave opening/closing arguments.
Led and cooperated with team of peers.
Best Attorney Award at 2010 Triton (UCSD) Invitational

CMC Shakespeare Clinic Sept. 2009 - Pres.

Designed, programmed and performed stylometric tests and auxiliary tools to shorten list of potential authors of Shakespeare Apocrypha. (A collection of Early Modern plays and poems for which Shakespeare has been hypothesized as an author or co-author.)
Collaborated with Prof. Ward Elliott and led and coordinated student team.

Languages: Conversant in Spanish, some Latin, Hebrew and Arabic.
Computers: Proficient in Windows, Linux; Microsoft Office; Java, Python, PHP, HTML/CSS, WordPress; LexisNexis; Adobe Photoshop, Captivate, Illustrator, Flash.
Confident and proficient public speaker.