Darrien Hunt, CSTEP/LSAMP student and Computer Programming and Information Systems Major, was selected as the only SUNY recipient of the Student Excellence Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In the Fall of 2019, Darrien was instrumental in founding a College Chapter of the NAACP at FSC with the help of external NAACP members, student leaders, and faculty members of the college. The idea for the chapter, birthed from his civic engagement efforts in his own community working with a local NAACP youth council, was meant to uplift and inspire Black students on a campus which lacked a student organization of this caliber. Amid the protests and turmoil surrounding the murder of George Floyd in June 2020, Darrien worked with the head of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Advisory Council to host a town hall event to open up a dialogue with students and faculty about race in America. Darrien sits on a variety of campus committees responsible for engaging students and resolving issues, such as the DEI Advisory Council, the Campus Safety Committee, which he helped reinstate, and the Multicultural Committee. He is also a member of two honor societies, the Sigma Beta Delta (ΣΒΔ) for International Honor Society in Business, Management and Administration and the Epsilon Pi Tau Honor Society - Gamma Beta Chapter. As of fall 2020, Darrien was appointed to be the Student Government Vice President, advocating for the student body and leading a motivated group of student Senators. As a member of both the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program and the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation serving underrepresented students on campus, Darrien recognized the importance for resources that enforce equity at the college level.
CSTEP has been a large contributor to Darrien’s academic and professional development. Through this program, Darrien was connected with a professor on campus, Dr. Zhao, to conduct research. He is working on developing an algorithm that will automatically recommend general education course electives based on student interests. This program when completed would supplement the academic advisement process by assisting students with their elective selections. CSTEP also connected Darrien with the Mini-Semester Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) which exposed him to many areas of research and served as a precursor for his acceptance into the SULI summer research program at BNL working on a project surrounding text mining. For the past two years, Darrien has been an active participant in both the CSTEP and LSAMP programs and has attended a variety of student development workshops and personal advisement sessions to help him with applying to graduate school, writing personal statements, and pursuing assistantships and other financial opportunities. Darrien was accepted into Hampton University, where he will be pursuing a Masters degree in computer science this fall.
