Sun Partners with High School Initiatives
Hi All,
Sorry for the week without a blog entry (I know, it must have been hard!). I'm back from a week of vacation in Seattle, WA. Long story short, I saw lots of neat things - humpback whales in the ocean, lunch at the Space Needle, and met my girlfriend's family (I was nervous but I think they like me. Maybe they have read my blog?).
Now that I'm back, I'd like to share an event that I had a chance to spearhead about a month ago. The Colorado School of Mines has a program for underprivileged students thinking about engineering who are interested in enrolling in the university. Over a two-week period, these students live on campus and take classes to get a feel for college life. As part of this program, they contacted us at University Relations at Sun to arrange a tour. Here's where I came in.
The group: ~35 students, one on a Monday, another on a Friday. The task: interest them in engineering via a Sun tour. The team: Mike Coe, University Relations Intern; Blake Lundstrom, Marketing intern; Danny Holland, Media Production intern (later replaced by Nathaniel Moller, Systems intern & Kathy Sulentic, Legal intern) and several acommodating lab owners (thank you!!!). The itinerary:
Monday's tour-
(20 min) Arrive at Sun & go through security
(20 min) Presentation about us & on what you can do with an engineering degree at Fortune 187
(5 min) Took the picture at the bottom, while waiting to get into the data center
(1 hr) Tour of one of Sun's largest data centers
(20 min) Transport & intro to Louisville facility
(20 min) Tour of Sun (formerly Storage Tek) storage facility
Farewell!
Friday's tour, conducted entirely at Louisville storage facility:
(30 min) Arrive at Sun & go through security
(20 min) Presentation about us & on what you can do with an engineering degree at Fortune 187
(30 min) Tour of one of Sun's largest storage facilities
Though exhausting, we had a real take away from the tour: we are very fortunate to work at a place like Sun and without having grown up in a professional services/IT environment, your opportunities may be greatly limited. Accordingly, it's our job to help broaden those opportunities for others. When I was first contacted to organize the tour, I thought of Project Open Door, which was pioneered in Brazil. Sun employees took the initiative to invite kids from the community without computer skills and partner with them to provide the encouragement, support, and training in computer skills. What an awesome program. Just last week, the Menlo Park campus put together a similar event with the help of interns such as Natalie Ajluni. Way to be!
More information on the Sun Foundation and Project Open Doors, which seeks to eliminate the digital divide can be found at http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/comm_invest/giving/foundation.html
Thank you to everyone who made this event a success, as they say "Sun shines in the community!"
(I am one from the left, in the black shirt. Blake is to the right of me in the green shirt)
