Creating ‘Something Useful’

Vahagn Hokhikyan

As laptop computer manager for Sunday services at the Armenian Christians of Evangelical Faith Church in Glendale, CSUN engineering grad student Vahagn Hokhikyan had a recurring problem. Locating a hymn by its number in the software program frequently turned into an exercise in frustration. A hymn would be announced and all eyes would turn to the church’s big screen to wait for the text. And wait.

The resourceful Hokhikyan eventually found a more flexible software program, but its English-only program would not display songs with Armenian characters, a non-starter for his congregants.

An amateur programmer, he already had his project in mind when he applied for the Presidential Scholars Award in 2006. “I thought there’s no point in having knowledge if it doesn’t translate into something useful,” said the scholar, who migrated to Los Angeles in 2001 from Yerevan, Armenia.

Mentored by computer science faculty Son Pham and Taehyung Wang, Hokhikyan set about developing a church-specific software that would make it easy to search and display hymns by number, alphabetical index, hymn topic and keyword. The final result was a program called Church Presenter, which he makes available to all comers completely free of charge; the software has been downloaded more than 100 times to date.

Like other inventors, Hokhikyan had to slog through the process of trial and error. Church Presenter started as a stand-alone application, but it had trouble implementing “a rich presentation rendering engine” (translation: with bells and whistles like pop-ups and videos). His solution was to modify his program as a PowerPoint toolbar add-in which opens up in a flash, ready to use.

An added bonus: Hokhikyan’s Presenter supports not only Armenian, Russian and English, but other languages as well.

The scholarship gave him valuable flexibility, Hokhikyan said. “I could focus on my studies and on that one practical software that could help others.”

When he finishes his master’s in electrical engineering at semester’s end, he will pursue a doctorate on the way to his career goal: a university professorship.