Student Success Story – Rochester Institute of Technology

By Kimberly DeLardge Assistant Director ~ Diversity Initiatives Rochester Institute of Technology

Lennard Streat

Rochester Institute of Technology – Rochester, NY

Major: Computer Engineering

Hometown: Syracuse, NY

Employer/Location: IBM – Austin, TX

Job Title: Hardware Engineer

Lennard came to Rochester Institute of Technology by way of Nassau, Bahamas and Syracuse, NY. His family moved to the states when he was in high school where he cultivated his interests in art and engineering. Because of this interest in creating things and in technology Lennard decided to major in Computer Engineering at RIT. He will be graduating with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree this spring.

He has had great success academically with an overall GPA of 3.5 and twice receiving a 4.0. Acclimating to the rigor of college level work was a challenge but Lennard was able to excel with the help of resources on campus such as the Multicultural Center for Academic Success (MCAS). He is currently a T.A. for ‘Introduction to Digital Systems’ and is a sought after tutor for several courses.

One of Lennard’s career goals is to ‘invent something’. He wants to patent something and see it make an impact on other products. He was inspired by his co-op experiences to go in this direction. He did three co-op blocks; one at USAA, another at IBM and the third on the RIT campus doing research as part of the McNair Scholars program.

I’ve been working with Lennard over the past 3 years to assist him in his co-op and full time searches. He makes my job easy! He is brilliant, easy-going and extremely friendly. My role with him has been primarily in coaching him through the rigorous process we have at RIT (5 co-op placements are required for engineering students), preparing him for interviews and building his confidence. Because he is such a high achieving student I often ‘nudged’ him about applying to some very large, branded employers. He wasn’t always confident but always seemed to receive an interview! We started at the beginning with refining his resume and getting it ‘co-op ready’, the next steps were to begin the application process and prepare for interviews. We worked a great deal on this aspect of his career development.

Lennard’s full time search was fairly seamless. His last co-op was at IBM in Austin, TX and he was able to ‘shop’ his resume around to several groups and hiring managers after he left. This proved to be a great opportunity as he will be starting there in the spring as a Hardware Engineer. The position is exactly what he was looking for in that it will be programming for hardware. He will also have the opportunity to be a part of patent work. When asked what he is looking forward to the most he replied, ‘Paying of debt – and getting to do hardware engineering!’ His advice for other students preparing for their careers is to find co-op positions at companies who have pipeline programs to fulltime opportunities.