Anthony Stuckey is a member of the charter class and current Network Engineer for IMSA's Information Technology Systems (ITS). He came to IMSA looking for a better and more academically challenging experience than his home school offered. He and his classmates lived in the main building at first, 24 students to a room, and they moved into the dorms in the spring of their first year. Stuckey felt unprepared for the rigor of the curriculum, not having had as much math as some of the other students. The teachers were supportive in helping him to catch up and feel more confident.
Stuckey quickly learned that he was interested in computer science and those classes were a formative experience. He decided to attend the University of Illinois and majored in computer science. The transition to college was made easier because many of his IMSA classmates attended U of I as well. He also felt well-prepared for his coursework there and tested out of some introductory level classes.
After graduating, he stayed in Champaign for eight years, and then moved to a job at Argonne National Laboratory. In May 2016 he started in his current role at IMSA. It's a different sort of job than he had held previously, being a much smaller organization with a small IT staff, which leads to more day-to-day variety in types of work.
Compared to when he was a student, Stuckey feels IMSA now has a more explicit focus on career preparation. He also says the emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism has always been a feature of the IMSA experience and it has remained important. Personally, it exposed him to people from all over the state, from many different backgrounds, and speaking different languages. For the charter class, IMSA was still in process and experimental, and Stuckey reflects on how it is now at a different stage as a mature institution. Overall, he says IMSA taught him how to learn in a way that he didn't even know he was missing before.
Interviewer: Sara Goek. Duration: 24:12.
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