My name is Kevin Benton Jr. I am originally from Wilson County, North Carolina. I am a freshman at Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. I am majoring in computer science with a concentration in science.

Throughout my time in school I always had an interest in computer science. The amazement of the computer field came from a class that I was in my junior year of high school.  At ECSU I was accepted in the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) program. This program gives me in depth training in various software programs and programming languages during the fall semester such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, C++, and Python. This was followed by a research project in the spring, to put these skills to use.   The research project was titled Design and Installation of a Video Conference Solution at the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research at Elizabeth City State University. During the project I learned many things dealing with networking and video conferencing. An example of this is that depending on the speed and strength of network will make a videoconference a success or not. Thanks to this research project, I was able to attend ADMI conference 2016 in Winston-Salem. While attending the conference there was various speakers there, ranging from people from Intel to people from Yahoo. I was also able to present the research during this conference. It was defiantly a learning experience for the fact that I now know that I need to be calmer and speak up. Another example of the way CERSER has helped is the trip to North Carolina State University (NC State). This trip was about geographical remote sensing (grs). When our group of people from CERSER first arrived at NC State, we went to their geographical lab and learned how they are planning to apply their studies to the real world. Then after that, we went to a meeting where there was a speaker talking about grs. I learned many things from the speaker, for example how people like the speaker would collect data and compare it to previous data.

My plan for success includes keeping a high GPA and seeking out research opportunities to obtain hands on use of my education. My goal is to graduate in the summer of 2018 and receive my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Science. Once I obtain my degree, I plan on pursuing my Master’s Degree in Computer Science with a future career goal in becoming a computer engineer.