Honors College Archie 'Tech Queen' Makes 'Remote' a Verb
Nicole Campos, a freshman in the Albert Dorman Honors College pursuing a Bachelor of Architecture at Hillier College, started on her path to NJIT even before she got to high school. Her interest in architecture started when she was a kid through a curiosity of meticulous exploration in every house she entered. When it came to choosing a high school, she applied to the closest high school with specialized programs like engineering. “I like math and science and anything that is solid,” said Campos.
Campos also says she is a fighter. “I fought for my place at Union County Vocational-Technical Schools (UCVTS). I am super Latina, I am super attached to my roots. I am really proud of my parents, they came to this country and fought tooth and nail for everything they have, and everything I have I owe to them, so I am very, very attached to my cultural roots like that. I’ll just start speaking Spanish at the most random times, it's a big part of me. This has driven me to fight to get into the STEM high school, and fight for my place at NJIT.”
When she was admitted to UCVTS she was sure a career in engineering was for her. It wasn’t until an engineering technology class—one of the closest offerings to art and design—taught by a packaging engineer where she experienced design, architecture and printing that her focus was redirected towards design.
That’s when I discovered I really liked designing.
This engineering technology teacher got the technology student association involved in architecture design competitions, and after that Campos realized a new career path.“I started researching schools, I was fortunate that I visited early, going to open houses. I came to an NJIT open house and the School of Architecture had a booth. I met with the associate dean, and we had a conversation about Revit. He asked me if I knew that you could calculate sustainability factors of buildings with Revit, and I said, ‘No, I learned Revit by watching Youtube videos!’”
Midway through junior year Campos realized she needed to put together a portfolio and started planning for what she would present. Ultimately she included a plushie she had made complete with her planning drawings, some knitting, her winning design from the architecture competition, and several drawings. “I signed up for a class in drawing techniques in order to get better at drawing”, Campos said. See her portfolio submissions here. “Hillier College is really flexible about what students submit in their portfolio.”
Though the first few projects at NJIT were hand-drawn, Campos excelled once the curriculum advanced to computer modeling. While at UCVTS, Campos gained lots of experience on various software, like Autocad, working in her tech department. “I had a technological advantage when we had to do 3D modeling with Rhino 6 because it is the older brother of Autocad.”
‘Remote’ In
Not one to let minor obstacles like needing to work from an off-campus location affect her, Campos “remotes” from home to her studio desktop computer when she can’t come in. “Whenever I am at home I can jump on my desktop using all of my graphics cards, CPU and software. One day I left my [studio] monitor on and some of my classmates saw the cursor moving around as I was working,” Campos said.
After not coming into the studio for three days, she discovered that her ability to log in to her desktop from home earned her the moniker “Tech Queen” after her peers took note of the phantom cursor. Next time she arrived in the studio she found a sign on her desk posted there by a studiomate, who has since asked how she does this.
Being this good at all things technical lends itself to collaboration, as students in first year studio have a lot of software programs to learn. Campos said, “I had a friend who was quarantined when Cyprus was shut down and he didn't have his laptop the weekend we started learning Rhino, when he came in four days later he was behind on his project, and I just walked him through step-by-step what I did on my project. He would shout out his questions from his desk a couple rows over. My studio is very collaborative. It is really nice that we are able to have that studio collaboration even if we are socially distanced from each other.”
