Wesly Beard

School/Division	Division of Information Technology & Sciences
Programs	Computer Science & Innovation Major
Class	2022
Pronouns	He/Him/His
Home State	Virginia

Concentration

App Development

Travel Course

India

Internship

Leahy Center (Champlain) and SOOS.io (Winooski)

How has Core changed your perspective (of self, of community, of the world)?

Core afforded me the special opportunity to travel as part of an educational trip to India. The experience expanded my view of the world in a literal and figurative way. The trip was eye-opening and exposed me to a part of the world that I had never seen, as well as entire religions I knew very little about before the course. It was a life-changing experience and one of my favorite times in college.

Describe your internship experience.

I have completed internships at the Leahy Center and at a software security company, SOOS.io, in nearby Winooski. At SOOS, I had the opportunity to work on both front- and back-end software projects, which helped me get a feel for what I enjoyed doing. While I definitely learned a lot from the experience, I also knew quite a bit going into it—like important day-to-day actions, as well as many advanced topics that had been touched on during my classes at Champlain. My internship experience was very helpful for job interviews and for helping me get my current post-graduate position.

Having been at Champlain now, what advice do you wish you could have given yourself on day one?

Form friendships with your professors earlier. You’ll see them a lot and it’s great to be on a personal level with them, even if it’s not always in an academic setting. I ended up forming some great connections with faculty later on in my college career, which provided me some fantastic opportunities. I wish I had done that earlier.