Scholarship-winning Student Veterans Talk Serving in the Military and Coming to NJIT
Three student veterans at NJIT were among the first to be awarded a new scholarship administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The Edith Nourse Rogers STEM Scholarship, named for the long-serving Massachusetts congresswoman and steadfast advocate for veterans, provides up to nine months of additional post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, up to $30,000. Recipients must be enrolled in a STEM degree program or seeking a teaching certificate.
Jaime Esquilin majored in information technology (IT) and minored in management information systems, with plans to pursue his master’s in IT after graduation. He came to NJIT with an associate degree in computer and information sciences and support services from Essex County College. Since January 2019, the Stirling resident has been working full time as a security operations center analyst in RWJBarnabas Health’s corporate cybersecurity department in West Orange.
Scotty Glass, studied electrical engineering and transferred from Brookdale Community College with an associate degree in engineering and lives in Middletown. He, too, works full time, at the Phillips 66 Refinery in Linden. Glass spent 10 years there as a maintenance and electrical instrumentation supervisor before being promoted to engineer a short time ago.
Ryan Karcher, from Vernon, majored in NJIT’s mechanical engineering program. He holds associate degrees in engineering and mathematics from College of the Canyons in California. He is employed full time at the pharmaceutical company, BluPax, in Edison, where he is responsible for project management as well as sales and customer service.
NJIT previously spoke with all three about receiving the Rogers STEM Scholarship, coming to the university for their higher education and bringing a wealth of real-world experience to the campus community.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Congratulations on receiving the Edith Nourse Rogers STEM Scholarship! What does this mean to you and how will it help you?
Jaime: It’s immense because I’ll be using it for my master’s program and I won’t have to worry as much.
Scotty: It takes the burden of paying for my last three semesters off my family and allows me to focus primarily on work and school. When the GI Bill ran out, I was trying to figure out how I was going to be able to afford it.
Ryan: It’s huge. This semester is the last of my GI Bill. I went to a two-year school out in Los Angeles, so I used a lot of my GI Bill before I transferred to the university. This scholarship will help me out tremendously to try and finish school debt-free.
Today is Veteran’s Day, so thank you, today and every day. In what capacity and where did you serve?
Scotty: I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps. I’ve been to every Marine Corps base there is in the United States.
Jaime: Just like Scotty, I’m a marine. I served 12 years. I’ve been both here and abroad, to Japan, Germany. I’ve been just about everywhere.
Ryan: I served in the Navy for five years. I was a structural and hydraulic mechanic on F-18 fighter jets. When I wasn’t deployed, I was stationed in various towns in California, and then when I was deployed, I was on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and I worked on the flight deck for flight operations out in the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. I was out on the carrier for about a year.
What skills did you develop in the military that relate to what you’re studying here at NJIT, or are helping you with your studies in general?
Jaime: I went into the military as a 17-year-old. You start learning it’s more about the team than about yourself. As time progresses, as you grow, you’re put into a leadership role. And then on top of that you learn time management skills. For IT, I did maintenance administration and I was also a database analyst. When I was deployed, I was pretty much the person who was setting up the networks, which goes hand-in-hand with what I’m doing now. Having all of that knowledge, it’s helped a lot.
Scotty: I have to piggyback on what Jamie said. When you start out in the Marine Corps, you grow exponentially while you’re there, because it’s just so immersive and so intense. You’re always building your relationship skills. And then you get your MOS, or your military occupational specialty, and so right there I was already learning the skills that I needed for all of my lower-level classes within electrical engineering. It just launched me forward in a great way.
Ryan: I would say skills that I learned that would translate were leadership and teamwork. You get a lot of exposure to people from different backgrounds, whether it’s religion or race, etc. You learn how to work well with others no matter where they come from.
Why did you choose to pursue higher education at NJIT?
Ryan: Well, obviously it’s a great engineering school. My brother’s an alum from NJIT, so I’ve seen the success people can have when they finish a degree at NJIT. And it’s an easy commute for me as well, and it’s affordable.
Jaime: I wanted to come to NJIT, because it’s one of the best schools when it comes to my field, in information technology, computer science. I went to Essex County College my first two years and then transferred here.
Scotty: I, too, went to a community college before, Brookdale, and I’ll be honest, Brookdale is what led me to NJIT. I spoke with several of the administrators and instructors there and they said that they were so much better aligned with NJIT than any other New Jersey school that it just made sense to come here. Usually, transferring credits is very painful, but coming from Brookdale, it was so streamlined and made life easier for me as a student trying to come in.
How did the university’s military and veteran affairs staff assist you in enrolling and acclimating to campus life?
Jaime: They were instrumental in the whole thing. The veteran rep, she was amazing! She would help with filling everything out, making sure I had everything put together right. If I needed anything, she was always there. It made the transition a lot easier. It’s great that the college helps us out as much as they do.
Scotty: Again, my experiences were very similar. I worked with the same young lady. She got me to come to some of the veterans meetings. I didn’t know anybody, because to be honest I didn’t have a lot of time. She’d help me navigate and point me to the right people, so that was very, very helpful.
Ryan: Everybody there was extremely helpful for whatever it was that I needed, whether it was steering me to the right place, getting my priority registration or benefits, or getting through the scholarship process.
What do you aspire to do with your NJIT degree?
Ryan: I’m sure it’s going to open a lot of doors. I would love to do something back with the government, maybe working with aircraft again. My goal is to get back to the West Coast and see what kinds of jobs are awaiting me there.
Jaime: I’m definitely looking to transition from the role that I have now at Barnabas Health to going back onto the government side — Department of Homeland Security, FBI, something within cybersecurity. That’s the other reason why I want to get my master’s, so that I have as much education as possible to go with my resume and body of work.
Scotty: For me personally, I just want to stay relevant with the times. If I could take my military leadership skills and my previous experience as a supervisor, and roll that into an engineering supervisor, that would be awesome. I will say in the petrochemical industry, as a whole, being an engineer opens many doors for you.
As a student veteran, what do you think you bring to the NJIT community?
Scotty: It comes down to understanding what we’re going to get out of this education. I think a lot of students think, ‘Oh, I’m going to NJIT, I’m going to be an engineer,’ and I’m like I’m 40 and I’m going back to school so that I can keep up with you guys. I’m doing my job already. If you want to stay competitive, the only way to do that is to maintain your education, so I try to tell them you’re going to just have to keep learning. I know my children, and I’m sure Jaime’s as well, will see that. My kids have never known me not going to school.
Ryan: One example is from my class the other day. We were learning about some measurement device and all this theoretical stuff and the mathematics of it, and I actually worked with it. It was a tool that we used on the aircraft that I worked on in the military. So you kind of bring in the applicability, not just the theoretical.
Jaime: We’re here to get the job done and move forward, and better the people around us as well when it comes to being in the classroom. So when we have those group projects, I take it upon myself to make sure everyone’s a part of the project and understands what’s going on and that it’s a big deal. We bring a real-world sensibility, a different mindset, to the table, which is beneficial to the college.
NJIT is ranked in the top 10% among colleges and universities nationwide and throughout New Jersey for veteran friendliness by College Factual, “the leading source of data analytics and insights on college outcomes.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Since this story was posted, NJIT learned of a fourth student veteran who has received an Edith Nourse Rogers STEM Scholarship. Carmine Coscia majored in construction engineering technology and minored in business.
