Professional/Technical Success
If you talk to Darren Heil for any length of time you realize why he was once awarded the honor of Computer Network Engineer (CNE) Student of the Year at Pierce College. Once a Boeing electrician, he was one of many workers caught in a round of lay-offs. He was introduced to the Workforce Ed program and realized he qualified for retraining through the Professional Technical program at Pierce College. He completed the program, graduated with an Associates of Science in Computer Network Engineering and is currently a Customer Engineer for EMC˛, a company that stores, manages and protects secure information for large banks and corporations.
Before Darren found himself unemployed he was already taking some computer classes as a hobby. The transition to full time student was challenging. As Darren says, “I stopped taking English in 10th grade. I had to relearn that and math. My first year was tough, but it taught me many skills which really help me today.” Not only was Darren busy going to school, he also was a single parent.
His second year at Pierce he says he'd work for anybody to gain experience and supplement his retraining funding. He says that he worked with the IT department in the labs, as desktop support and finally on the college servers. He met a lot of people which helped him network his way into a job as a vendor at Microsoft. He says that job in data storage is what helped him acquire the job he's at today. Darren can't praise Pierce College enough. He says he can't believe how much he learned through all his classes and realizes how much better off he is because he went back to school.
