As professionals progress throughout our careers, it is important we remember the people and institutions that prepared us for our chosen careers.

1. Giving Back is Our Responsibility
Randy Robinson, May 14, 2016
Our Heritage
Each of us have people and institutions that
helped prepare us to be successful in our
careers. It is extremely important to find ways to
contribute to those who helped us along the
way.
My Origin Story
I attended a private school for boys in Chattanooga, Tennessee, thanks to a generous
uncle. This opportunity provided me with a first class secondary education. It was
during high school that I decided to go into computer science. As I began my college
search, I looked at schools in the Southeastern U.S. with strong engineering programs.
I received multiple scholarship offers from
private universities, but none from my two
leading choices: University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and Auburn
University.
I visited both campuses and liked both
schools. As high school graduation
neared, freshman orientation was
scheduled for me at both universities.
Auburn was first.
I drove to Auburn for the orientation and knew after the first day that this was my new
home. There was something different about Auburn that is hard to describe to people
who have never been there. While it certainly earns its moniker of being “the loveliest
village on the plains,” it is the people that make Auburn such a special place.
During the next few years, I studied computer science in the College of Engineering,
acquired a top notch engineering education, made lifetime friends with a number of
people and, most importantly, met my future wife.

2. The Career
After graduating from Auburn, I secured a
programming job with a fortune 500 transportation
company in Atlanta, Georgia. It was there that I
began to hone my mainframe programming skills
while my fiancé attended graduate school at the
University of Georgia where she was pursuing her
MBA.
After we were married, we decided to move back to Tennessee, where I obtained
another programming position with a fortune 500 insurance company. I was fortunate
enough to be part of our company’s first PC/distributed application development
project. Over the next several years, I continued to develop my coding skills and
branched out into project management and ultimately people management. Seven
years into this career, I was promoted to Assistant Vice President and then to Vice
President nine months later. I’ve worked for the same company for almost twenty-five
years, and have been an IT executive for the last sixteen.
Giving Back
As our children began to explore colleges, Auburn University was a top contender
(and ultimate choice) for both. We took our daughter to Auburn for a college visit
during her junior year in high school. While there, I took my 15-year-old son to the
Computer Science department and introduced him to the department chair, who
was one of my professors. This action led to an invitation to join Auburn University’s
Computer Science and Software Engineering Industrial Advisory Board.
As a board member, I have the opportunity to visit
Auburn University twice a year for board meetings.
While our meetings are focused on the state of the
department, enrollment, budgets, curriculum, etc., the
highlight of these meetings is spending time with
students in the classroom and in after-hour hosted pizza-
party workshops.
The young men and women we meet are passionate
about their chosen career direction, but in many cases,
lack real world knowledge to help them be successful
quickly in the professional world. It is a tremendous opportunity to meet with the
students to answer questions and talk with them about what they can expect in the
“real world.”

3. Scholarship Opportunities
Considering the age of the computer
industry compared to the other
engineering disciplines, it is remarkable
that we have an endowment fund at all.
I enrolled in Auburn during the second or
third year of the Computer Science
program.
The board strives to give as many
scholarships to deserving students each
year, but it is difficult for us to compete with other engineering departments that have
been in place for 100-plus years and have significantly larger scholarship endowment
funds.
As a donor and supporter of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering CSSE IAB
Scholarship Fund, I want to encourage everyone, especially Auburn alumni, reading
this post to contribute towards the education of deserving high school students who
have demonstrated the aptitude and grades to be successful in Auburn University’s
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.
How to Give
Visit Auburn University Foundation at
www.auburnuniversityfoundation.org. Click on the “Give
Online Link” and follow the instructions. In order to
designate your gift to the Computer Science and Software
Engineering Industrial Advisory Board Scholarship fund,
please specify “Samuel Ginn College of Engineering CSSE
IAB Scholarship Endowment Fund” in the “other” category.
Your gifts are tax deductible and will assist deserving high
school seniors to attend one of the finest universities in the
Southeast.