Ryan Atkinson is a QUEST Cohort 17 Alumnus and 2012 UMD graduate in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating, Ryan worked for two and a half years as a Mechanical Engineer for ExxonMobil in New Orleans. In early 2016, he enrolled in Hack Reactor, a coding bootcamp in San Francisco. Shortly after graduating from Hack Reactor, Ryan signed with SolarCity where he works today as a Software Engineer.

As a recent graduate, can you tell us a little bit about Hack Reactor?

Absolutely. The general hook is that Hack Reactor is an intensive three-month school that helps passionate individuals learn to be software engineers, and it boasts a 99% placement rate with an average starting salary of $105K, trending north. Intense, in this case, describes the 11 hours per day x 6 days per week x 12 weeks, or 792 hours of required class time, which equals about 1.65 years of traditional university class time.

For QUEST students, I’ll propose a different angle. My perception during and after Hack Reactor was that I was experiencing one of the two most unique, carefully-curated, and inspiring academic experiences available; the other being QUEST. I thought QUEST was brilliant because you were immersed in an environment of exceptional and highly motivated individuals, the instructors had an unusual and inspiring passion for the program, and the curriculum was always pushed to be as forward-thinking and valuable to students as possible, all things I was happy to find at Hack Reactor as well.

Outside of the schedule difference, how is Hack Reactor different than traditional academia?

I remember taking Dynamics during my sophomore year of college and finally feeling like I had discovered the subject matter that captured my excitement and interest. Of course, this was one of five very different classes I was taking at the time, and I was half a semester away from moving on to a completely new slate of subjects.

Bootcamps are the complete opposite. Every lesson is strategically placed to build off of the previous one as students cultivate an ever-growing grasp of the bigger picture that is application engineering. A class on server technology, potentially a semester long subject at a traditional university, could leave you concurrently thrilled, confused, and simply salivating for related content to fill out the big picture puzzle. At Hack Reactor, the other pieces of that puzzle, classes on user interfaces, database technology, data structures, etc., are scheduled as separate two-day sprints just a few days later.

In this sense, the script is flipped. It’s this connection of concepts and curated series of “aha” moments that I don’t remember having in college when relating different courses. Rather than drilling down to the extreme depths of each subject matter independently, at bootcamps, the topics are highly related and delivered to the point of proficiency. This leaves it up to the individual to separately explore any specific topic of interest in as much detail as they desire.

Who makes a good candidate for bootcamps?

It’s hard not to be overly subjective here, as so many different types have been successful in the program. Thankfully, there’s a very objective way to find out.

• Give chapters 1-5 of Eloquent Javascript a read.
• (Or) if that’s a little too dull for you, try the first two courses in Code School’s Javascript track, then head back to Eloquent Javascript.
• When you’re done, stop by CoderByte and start knocking out the easy coding challenges*.
• If you think completing these challenges is a lot of fun, you like computers, and love at least the idea of building things, the odds are that good you’re a great fit for bootcamps.

*Tip – ignore and avoid answers utilizing RegEx, not a great use of time.

Additionally, a few of you have probably kicked around some VBA in Excel or MATLAB for calculus. If you found the power of the code and the fact that you can automate pretty much anything really exciting (read: tell the computer how to check into Southwest flights for you), that’s typically an indication you’ll be a good fit. If you hated MATLAB (me), don’t worry, most coding languages are way more fun.

How does this all fit in for a current student at UMD?

The background of students at Hack Reactor is very diverse, including roughly (my estimation) 25% that either took time off, squeezed it in between semesters, or dropped out of college to attend. A surprising and increasing number of new students show up with degrees in computer science simply because they don’t feel they have the skills necessary to land a job in the industry.

If you’re really interested, the safe play is to shoot for a spot in one of the summer cohorts and skip a round of the traditional university internship plan. To be clear, once you start day one at Hack Reactor, you won’t have any inclination to go back.

If you would like to contact Ryan for more information, he can be reached at rjatkinson2@gmail.com.

QUEST alumnus Ricky Wilson (Q6) has been selected as a Modern-Day Technology Leader and will be recognized at the 30th annual BEYA (“Becoming Everything You Are”) STEM Conference this month. These individuals are nominated by the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine. Ricky will be recognized on February 19th, 2016 at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market St.

According to BEYA, “Modern Day Technology Leaders are men and women who are demonstrating outstanding performance and will shape the future course of engineering, science, and technology. [Ricky] and the other technology leaders are individuals whose stories of phenomenal success merit national recognition.” For more information, visit their website.

Ricky has worked at Constellation since 2010 in a number of different capacities, initially as a Business Analyst both in Constellation’s IT group and Strategic Systems and Business Operations (SSBO). As a Business Analyst, his goal was to improve the system architecture and automate reporting in order to eliminate non-value added activities. Ricky currently works in Constellation’s Structuring group as a Sr. Structuring analyst, where he develops software solutions for Constellation.

Ricky credits the QUEST program with helping him develop the skills and abilities that have allowed him to achieve this recognition. “QUEST was about understanding business needs and using data to provide a solution that will be valuable to the customer.  It was my first real project of that nature and was also the first time I had to work with a multi-disciplinary team.  I learned a lot about identifying strengths, sharing responsibilities, and setting expectations so that multiple pieces can come together to form a single solution.  I would say that QUEST introduced me to the skills that I needed to be successful and I have spent years building upon and sharpening those skills.”

Ricky is also the new chair of the QUEST alumni board and shared his thoughts on the goals and initiatives of the board moving forward. “We recently had our retreat and we are working to continue strengthening the QUEST program. QUEST is already very successful and our primary goal is to continue to support existing programming and events. Our goals for this upcoming year will be to build upon this success by improving the web presence of QUEST, building out a directory for alumni and students, and working towards financial independence from the university by beginning to establish a QUEST endowment.”

Congrats Ricky!

Point 1:
Joel Liebman, PwC Public Sector, and Constancy of Purpose

Point 1
The 10 Commandments, Hammurabi’s Code, the Terms and Conditions for all of your app downloads. Certain rules and principles stand sacrosanct in the narrative of human history. For students of quality, W. E. Deming’s 14 Points assume a similar status. Deming codified his philosophy with the aim to transform American industry. In this endeavor, he proved quite successful. Through his research, publications, workshops, and consulting work, Deming played a foundational role in the Total Quality Movement.

In this series, I take each of his famous fourteen points and view them through the lens of QUEST Alumni and their work today.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
– W. E. Deming, Point 1 of “The 14 Points”

Joel Liebman
For the first installation in this series I spoke with Joel Liebman, a Cohort 14 QUEST alumnus and manager in PwC Public Sector, which supports federal, state, and local government entities to solve complex problems. Joel and his team deliver financial management, internal control, and risk management solutions for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, one of the seven main components comprising the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

PwC Public Sector won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 2014, the highest honor an organization can receive for quality and performance excellence in the United States. They are the only professional services organization ever to earn this distinction. I spoke with Joel about the journey to achieve the award, how he has grown from the experience, the impact of the award on PwC Public Sector, and how that translates to greater value for its clients.

Joel, could you contextualize the difficulty of achieving the Malcolm Baldrige Award for our audience?

The year that we won the award was not the first year we applied for the award—it took us 3 or 4 cycles before we were accepted. It was really a testament to our persistence as a firm and public sector practice. It’s extremely challenging to achieve the award as Malcolm Baldrige is the highest honor for quality in the U.S.

Side note: “Both Xerox, a 1989 winner, and Corning, a 1989 finalist, admit to having spent, respectively, $800,000 and 14,000 labor hours preparing applications and readying employees for site visits by Baldrige examiners.” (Harvard Business Review)

To achieve such a coveted award I’m sure it took the entire practice. What efforts did you have to put in personally to achieve this award?

It definitely did take the entire practice. The Malcolm Baldrige initiative was driven and championed at the top by Scott McIntyre (U.S Public Sector Leader) and his commitment to quality. It emanated out to everyone within the public sector practice. We had to understand fully what it took from a day-to-day perspective to deliver a level of service worthy of the award.
In order to demonstrate and communicate our efforts, as a manager, I was part of a group that was potentially going to be selected for a group or individual, multi-hour interview by Malcolm Baldrige inspectors. I had to be ready to discuss our people, processes, and infrastructure that support our internal and external commitment to quality and run them through any questions they may have on our services or our available resources.

It seems like there was strong buy-in from the top.

The year before we won you could tell that we were all in as a practice. Leadership essentially took a dedicated group of our top performers to solely focus on preparing our application, coordinating our evaluation, and ultimately achieving the award. There were numerous webinars, in-person training sessions, and regular conference calls with our employees at all levels. From senior leadership to our first year associates, we had to fully understand the infrastructure that supports our business and how that infrastructure manifests in the highest quality services delivered to our clients.

Given that you’ve spent over 6 years in the firm, how did you see PwC Public Sector transform throughout this process?

PwC Public Sector was only 5 or 6 years old when I joined the firm and I would guess our headcount was only around 400-500 people. We’ve grown to a point to where we are over 1,000 people now. When you grow a sizeable business at such an impressive rate, it can become challenging to maintain a level of consistent quality every single day. So to support that level of execution it is really important to build an infrastructure with a strong commitment to quality. It is engrained in the culture of the firm. The pursuit process [of the award] each year and over the course of those 3-4 years was a great opportunity to get better, self-evaluate, and see where we can improve to increase our quality. Even the years we didn’t win the grand award, we gained valuable feedback we subsequently incorporated into our business in the name of continuous improvement.

What type of recognition have you seen in the community?

Quite a bit of recognition. Scott McIntyre has done a speaking tour and worked with other businesses to improve the quality of their work. Many of our clients, some of whom were very familiar with the award from their own industry experience and even some of their experiences pursuing the award, were noticeably impressed.

We discussed Deming’s 14 Points before the interview. How would you communicate the importance of “constancy of purpose” for a firm to QUEST students today?

There is no substitute for it. When I think about the drive of the typical student in the QUEST community, this, [a firm with constancy of purpose], is the kind of environment that we can succeed in and contribute to in very meaningful ways. Otherwise, you’re in an organization that risks complacency. It is often easier to do things the way they’ve been done which doesn’t move you personally or professionally forward.

Any last message you want to leave the reader with?

I would just say that the journey doesn’t end with the achievement of the award. It wasn’t the apex. It was great validation, but we still recognize that our efforts require continued improvement. There is still plenty more to do to uphold and improve that level of quality. Plus, there is the opportunity to be a multiple award recipient, so there is always that.

Thanks Joel! Awesome speaking with you!

For additional information on PwC Public Sector and their Malcolm Baldrige winning year you can reference the National Institute for Standards and Technology’s website: http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/award_recipients/pricewaterhousecoopers-public-sector-practice.cfm

Mark Nathanson (Cohort 20) graduated this past spring and currently works at the University of Maryland’s Department of Information Technology with the University Process Innovation Group, further improving business processes on campus. These processes include areas around UMD ranging from the Hiring Process and the Procurement Process and everything else in between.

Recently, I reached out to Mark to ask how it has been transitioning from student to professional life. Being in the Process Innovation Group for almost 6 months now, he says that life has been treating him well. Within his particular group at the Department of Information Technology, he even gets to work with several QUEST student interns.

I reached out to two of those student interns, Connor Welch of Cohort 22 and Jasmine Zhu of Cohort 26, to learn about their experiences at DIT and what it’s like to work so closely with a QUEST alum.

What is your role at DIT?

Jasmine: “My role in DIT is as a Business Process Analyst. I’m working on a project called the Student Experience Project where we are trying to align the university’s services with what students are looking to get out of their college experience, and my role is to conduct student interviews to discover and refine what students want out of college.”

What’s it like working with a QUEST alum?

Connor: “It has been great working with Mark! He was the TA for 190H last spring when I was a mentor so we got to know each other well over the course of the semester. When I initially joined the University Process Innovation group, Mark was not on the team, but when I heard we were hiring him later in the summer I got really excited. It is great whenever the opportunity is brought up to work with a fellow QUESTee since there is a seamless transition in working together. There is a mutual understanding on methodologies and approaches to problems, and in addition, Mark is an overall great guy!”

What is your favorite part of working at DIT?

Jasmine: “My favorite part about working at DIT is being able to actively make an impact on my school while learning more about my peers. By doing the Student Experience Project, I am learning about what fellow students want and how we can improve university processes to meet these needs. It is very cool that I can potentially change aspects of Maryland and shape it into a better school for students to attend.”

Are there any QUEST skills that you apply to your work?

Connor: “QUEST skills are always used while working with a client, whether it is the soft skills when interviewing stakeholders or analytically trying to develop a data model for a process. One of the more applied skills has to be ideation and relying on many iterations to develop a solution. For example, when developing a framework to outline a process, everyone in the office will bounce ideas off of each other and build off of each other’s ideas. This usually results in a messy whiteboard, but the outcome of an effective framework for the client. Other than QUEST, I cannot think of any other classes that would have prepared me to work in such an environment.”

And Mark agrees. He accredits QUEST as being one of the great opportunities he had while as an undergraduate student at UMD. As a high school student, he visited UMD and shadowed a student who was taking 390H at the time. After this experience, Mark concluded that QUEST was one of the main reasons he wanted to come to UMD. His achievements as an undergraduate student are many. To name a few, he piloted a Computer Design elective, traveled to Silicon Valley to see the lessons he learned in class applied in the job field, and even won Project of the Year at the 490H QUEST Conference.

Attributes that have made him successful can be seen from his values. He is a huge advocate for being patient and waiting until the right opportunity arises. However, he notes “that doesn’t imply a passive approach”, but rather to “take charge” and seize any opportunity that may land upon a person. To current students, especially for those looking for their first or second internships, he gives the same advice: seek opportunities you are genuinely interested in.

“As a student, your interest in a position almost always trumps your experience, at least in my eyes,” Mark adds.

Mark welcomes anybody that would like to reach out to him with any individual questions. He can be reached at mnathan1@umd.edu.

By: Joseph Piscitelli

Most people in the QUEST community know Cheryl Rosenberg as a Q20 alumna with many great accomplishments inside and outside of the classroom. However, most don’t know that on top of all of her accomplishments thus far, she has also done something beyond accolades and awards: saved a life.

Rosenberg’s 23^rd birthday was definitely one of a kind. She’s never been one to place special emphasis on birthdays, but this birthday was like no other.

On this day, she was scheduled to donate her peripheral blood stem cells to a 65-year-old man suffering from Non-Hodgkins’s Lymphoma. She didn’t know much about him, just as he had limited knowledge of her, but Rosenberg was eager and excited to follow through with the procedure.

It all started in the summer of 2010 when Rosenberg was working as a lifeguard at a camp in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. In order to get more people on the registry, her camp held a drive for the cause.

“All I needed to do was swab my cheek so it really wasn’t a big deal and there was no commitment to donate should I be called as a match,” Rosenberg recalls.

Years passed by, and Rosenberg never received a call. Even though she knew the odds that she would be a match were low, she stayed hopeful and optimistic she could one day give the gift of life.

“I always hoped I’d be a match but I figured it was a long shot and much like winning the lottery, it probably would never happen,” says Rosenberg.

Then, towards the end of her senior year at the University of Maryland, Rosenberg received the call she waited over four years to receive. She was filled with excitement. While her parents were nervous, they never stopped her or tried to halt her in following through. Cheryl had no doubts she was going to donate.

“Once I was called, I didn’t second guess my decision for a second. I knew I had an amazing opportunity on hand to save a life. I wasn’t going to let that pass.”

The call came at a defining moment in her life, having just graduated from college and begun her transition into the real world.

“I got called at the end of my second semester senior year and was able to donate over the summer before I began working. I didn’t need to take off any time from school or work.”

For Rosenberg, the process’s timing was beyond perfect. Additionally, as she transitioned to the next chapter of her life, the process of donating helped propel her for her next encounters.

“The whole process has made me more aware of how important the seemingly little and very easy things are to do for another person,” says Rosenberg. “I barely gave up anything of myself to donate and I was able to make such a huge impact. Small things like a smile or putting yourself in another person’s shoes and trying to help make their life a little easier often doesn’t do anything negative for you, but makes a huge difference for someone else. I try to keep that lesson in mind every day.”

Rosenberg is now working as a Business Technology Analyst for Deloitte Consulting in New York. Due to laws, donors and recipients are not allowed to keep in touch and must remain anonymous for a year. Through the organization, A Gift of Life, her recipient sent her a thank you letter, and Cheryl followed up. However, this upcoming summer, marking the one year anniversary of the procedure, Rosenberg hopes to connect with her recipient.

When asked what someone considering donating should know, Rosenberg said: “I would first let people know how easy it is to get on the registry. It’s just a cheek swab, that’s it. If a person is nervous about the process they can always register and then worry about it and make a final decision if they are ever a match. There is no commitment to donate even if you’re in the registry. The organization has so much information and resources available to you and make the process so easy and simple.”

For more information about getting on the registry or donating to Gift of Life, check out their website: http://www.giftoflife.org/

Cheryl Rosenberg

A heartwarming story about QUEST alumni, Beth and Brian Schaeffer

By: Ryan Chow

In the warm summer of 1996, Beth and Brian embarked on an adventure known to all of us as QUEST Camp at Camp Horizons in Harrisonburg, Virginia. As members of Cohort 4, they met each other at a time when QUEST (formerly called IBM/Total Quality Management) was still a new program. Beth was double majoring in Transportation & Logistics and French, while Brian was studying Mechanical Engineering. After they met at QUEST Camp, Beth and Brian worked together on the same team for a few projects. While QUEST has always been famous for uniting business students with engineering students on multidisciplinary projects, nobody at the time could predict that Beth and Brian would go on to get married and have two kids.

Despite demanding schedules throughout their undergraduate and adult careers, Beth and Brian were able to carefully craft their lifestyles in order to maintain a successful relationship. Their individual careers have also been a remarkable success since they met each other. After graduating, Beth worked as a consultant at Hitachi Consulting and IBM. She currently works in human resource management at Merkle, a performance marketing agency specializing in data-based marketing solutions. Brian spent 12 years working in management consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM. He currently works as a manager at Johnson and Johnson, a job which allows him to work from home and spend more time with his family.

Beth and Brian were married on August 9th, 2003. They currently keep their hands full with their 7-year old girl and 4-year old boy, who were born three years apart, but share the same birthday. Both individuals credit the QUEST program for an “ingrained ability to work on teams” and said that the skills they learned play a large role in their career success.

Thank you to the Schaeffers for sharing this heartwarming story and staying involved with the QUEST community after all of these years.

The Schaeffer Family

By: Jacob Wilkowski

Crumbs and Whiskers is the brainchild and enormously famous cat café of QUEST alumna Kanchan Singh (Q17).  The result of a trip to Thailand, where Kanchan volunteered in an elephant sanctuary and visited a cat café for the first time, Crumbs and Whiskers has burgeoned into a cultural phenomenon in the DC area. Praised for its ambitious approach to social business, Crumbs and Whiskers began as a Kickstarter campaign with the message, “Cats shouldn’t live in cages. Cat lovers shouldn’t miss out on the joy of cats. Two problems, one solution.” Now in its second month of business, Crumbs and Whiskers has enjoyed coverage from the likes of the Washington Post, The DCist, The Georgetowner, and (of course) The Diamondback. Read more about Crumbs and Whiskers below…

Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/inside-dcs-first-cat-cafe-where-you-can-cuddle-by-the-hour/2015/06/19/ae9dba84-1249-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html

The DCist:

http://dcist.com/2015/03/dcs_first_cat_cafe_nearly_funds_its.php

The Georgetowner:

http://www.georgetowner.com/articles/2015/jun/22/crumbs-and-whiskers-cat-cafe-opens-paw-sitive-reception/

The Diamondback:

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/diversions/living/crumbs-and-whiskers-offers-unique-combination-of-coffee-and-cats/article_b86b585a-204a-11e5-9984-c36830c7853e.html