The students of FTC Florida have made some amazing accomplishments and STC would like to highlight them for what they’ve done. Each paragraph under a student’s name is a quote from them or one of their peers describing their accomplishments as posted in their discord group’s accomplishments channel.
Shout Out to the FTC Graduates
Congratulations to the Spring and Summer graduates: John Clement, Jyazee Daryaei, Joana Donovan, Shaelyn Drost, Janet Jaimes, Caitlyn Hunter, Nicole Lindquist, Kristine Nguyen, Jesslyn Parrish, Amy Toole, Danielle Trenholm, Ryann Valmonte, Leslie Vernon, Sarah, Vilcnik, Linda Vu, and Samantha Walker!
UCF English Department Award Winners
Additionally, some of the FTC members won awards at UCF’s English Department Awards Ceremony which took place on May 4, 2022. Congratulations!
- Caitlyn Hunter
- Outsanding Managing Editor (nominated by Professor Laurie Uttich)
- Excellence in Syntactic Analysis (nominated by Dr. Beth Rapp-Young)
- Janet Jaimes
- Outstanding Digital Humanist (volunteer for Samuel Johnson Dictionary Online)
- Joana Donovan
- Excellence in Project Management (nominated by Dr. Jane Vaughan)
- Excellence in Design (nominated by Dr. Sonia Stephens)
- John Clement
- Stuart Omans Award for Excellence in Technical Communication (nominated by Dr. J.D. Applen)
- Outstanding Service to Sigma Tau Delta (nominated by Professor Peter Telep)
- Selected as featured reader for the Technical Communication track
- Kristine Nguyen
- Outstanding Digital Portfolio (nominated by Dr. Emily Johnson)
Jesslyn Parrish
Jesslyn defended her dissertation, got her doctorate, and completed her PhD.
Professor Carolyn Glasshoff
At the start of the school year, Professor Carolyn Glasshoff, our now co-advisor, completed her PhD! She is now Dr. Glasshoff and we are glad to have her co-advising the club this year.
Joana Donovan
Congratulations on being one of two STC Student Scholarship winners!
Rebecca Navas
Becky works as a Communications Coordinator for Gearbox Entertainment. She has worked on and is credited in their most recent game, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands!
Cora Heisler
First- A huge shoutout to the panel discussion with John Paz and the other speakers. It was exactly the confidence boost I needed in my post-graduate career journey.
Now to the GREAT STUFF… I’m usually not one to brag, but I am proud to say that I graduated early from UCF in December. I’m the first person in my family to graduate college, with the closest relative being my second aunt, so it was a huge deal for both my family and myself.
I saved up and was able to spend January and most of February without working or doing school. It was a breath of fresh air, but I couldn’t help but feel not productive. I took the opportunity to do some LinkedIn networking, joined a few young professional and career-based groups, and really dug into my interests for different career paths. I spent the second half of February and all of March interviewing for positions- getting all the way to final panels to not be chosen.
I started to feel pretty down on myself and feeling like I wasn’t going to make it. I have bills to pay and my credit utilization has -never- been higher. BUT hard work pays off. When I wasn’t interviewing, I applied to over 250 jobs via indeed and LinkedIn, not including any company-specific sites. Thanks to a plethora of career-based TikTok’s and the panel meeting last month with FTC and STD, I had a solid idea of what I wanted in my career, the type of environment I deserve, and the qualities to look for in my future employers. The most important takeaway, although I was desperate for a position, I knew my worth.
I was offered three career-defining jobs over the last 3 weeks. Although it was the longest interviewing i have completed to date- with 5 rounds of interviews and 2 panels, you’re currently reading the longest post in the channel written by a future employee of Thompson Reuters.
I’m so excited to say I am working at TR on the Pondera Project as a Proposal Specials, being groomed to take over as head proposal manager in the next 3 years. The team is small, communicative, and exerts in their field, but the important thing is, they chose me for my personality, NOT for being the most poised interviewee.
Alan Velasco
Just to put some more good vibes out there for others, I also managed an accomplishment. After putting in nearly 50 applications and attending numerous information sessions, I ended up being selected for interviews by 2 companies. The first company conducted a panel interview with 4 people, while the other company had me go through 5 rounds of interviews.
I ended up getting and accepting an offer from the second company. It’s a cybersecurity company where I’ll be doing research and writing stuff.
Don’t give up, keep going! You’ll find a good fit. Also, you’ll never know how you’ll come across an opportunity. I actually ended up with my internship offer after an interaction on Twitter led me to apply for it.
Zachary Miller
I was accepted into UCF’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. This is really exciting for me as it is one of my first scholarships and my first fellowship. My research is in human computer interaction which is what brought me to FTC in the first place. This summer I will be conducting usability evaluation’s for a mental health application geared towards youth audiences.
Janet Jaimes
Janet is starting as a technical writer at JHT this Monday, May 16, 2022.
Benjamin Bowles
Ben started an internship at L3Harris last week.
Caitlyn Hunter
Caitlyn and the Cypress Dome editorial team successfully published Issue 33 of UCF’s Cypress Dome Literary Magazine a few weeks back. She served as managing editor and oversaw a lot of the production
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