Student Technology Services (STS) hosted a graduation party after commencement to honor its graduating student staff members: Student Managers Jack Heuberger and Vinay Viswanathan, Level I Techs Alana Depaz and Morgan Ye, and Level II Tech/Trainer Constin Liu. All five of have worked for STS for over 3 out of their 4 years at WashU providing service for the WashU residential student community at a time when online learning ramped up the need for tech support.
Post WashU and after some summer international travel, Morgan will be attending Harvard‘s Dental School and Constin will head out to University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine to do research in computational neurobiology; Vinay and Jack will continue their made-in-STS friendship as they will be heading out to Seattle to work at Amazon and Microsoft, and Alana will return to her beloved hometown, Chicago, to work for the Global Technology Rotational Program at the McDonalds HQ.
Oana Dimofte, Assistant Director of STS, and her team worked tirelessly to put this celebration together and transformed the STS service desk into a proper graduation event space. The celebration brought together the departing students, accompanied by their proud parents and friends, and STS staff. Customized STS yearbooks were curated for the recent grads, complete with farewell notes from all the STS student staff and even some former STS alumni, and parents received something tangible to take home to remind them of their grads: 3D-printed busts.
Peeti Sithiyopasakul, Manager of Technical Services, delivered a warm speech recognizing the hard work and dedication of the graduates. His words sparked laughter and happy tears among the attendees, creating a heartfelt atmosphere of appreciation for the shared experiences and friendships formed within the STS community.
When asked what the most meaningful part of their time was working at STS, all five STS alumni had eerily similar answers. Jack thought back of his first year on campus and said, “the people here are fantastic, STS was a great place to work during my freshman year when we literally weren’t allowed to do anything!” Alana similarly answered, “cliché but seriously all the friends I’ve made, and also Oana and Peeti always being so supportive. I’ve never really had any other adults on campus that I felt like I could lean on as much as them. Thank you guys so much for everything you have done for me I will never forget it.” Morgan added that the most meaningful part of her STS experience was “the community. I loved meeting so many talented and genuine individuals in my time here.” Lastly, Vinay’s resonating takeaway was that he “will always cherish the friends made at STS, including Oana and Peeti. Working at STS for four years was one of the most formative experiences I had at WashU. I will look back fondly over the problems/tickets I solved, the fun activities we had, and the lots of food we got to enjoy courtesy of Oana making sure we were well fed.”
Though the graduating student staff will be missed, their departure marks growth and new beginnings for the entire STS family.