Alongside the wave of excitement at Commencement 2022, NJIT’s College of Science and Liberal Arts recently decorated their star students at its annual awards ceremony.

Here, a diverse group of graduates who shared CSLA’s Outstanding Student Award look back on their NJIT journey and the successes they’ll take with them.

The bachelor’s that Donald “Will” Andrews earned at New Jersey Institute of Technology is in industrial engineering, but his heart is in international development.

The 2022 graduate’s interest in global issues traces back to high school, when he participated in the Model United Nations, and accelerated after his second year at NJIT, when he tackled a Humanity in Action Fellowship that examined democracy and pluralism in modern Germany in the context of the Holocaust.

Marcos Molina, a chemical engineer with a penchant for complicated algorithms, made a tough call when deciding among Ph.D. programs at several graduate Ivy League institutions. In the end, he chose to pursue theoretical and computational research at Princeton.

Crisis presents opportunity, and given the pandemic, war in Ukraine, structural racism, climate change and questions around the world’s supply of energy, food and water, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson called on the Class of 2022 at New Jersey Institute of Technology to take on such challenges with the goal of improving lives.

Pradnya Desai, a senior computer science major, made it her mission to accomplish as much as possible during her four years at NJIT, amassing an impressive resume that includes multiple awards and recognitions for her work combining technological invention with a desire to positively affect  society.

Jada Evans had a plan when she arrived at New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2019 and achieved it – and then some – ­in just three years.

Sreya Sanyal ’22 is right where she wants to be in the fight against cancer — at the cutting-edge of medical research. She’ll soon be using the breakthrough gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, often described as “genetic scissors”, to study human disease as a post baccalaureate researcher with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after graduation.

For Sanyal, whose parents met and graduated from medical school in India, her journey toward a career as a physician-scientist specializing in cancer biology has deep roots, beginning at the age of 10. 

Charis Hwang packed a lot into her four years studying business at New Jersey Institute of Technology, including three internships and a cooperative educational experience.

That thick undergraduate resumé may explain why even before completing an accelerated master’s program, she landed a job with global consulting firm PwC. In fact, her last internship, during the summer of 2021, was at PwC, where she found a calling.

Sydne Nance's journey from NJIT architectural summer camp to track star to chapter president to professional designer was fueled by the confidence she gained through the university's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP).

Joseph Kennedy has arms for volleyball, but now he's also armed with a B.S. in business from Martin Tuchman School of Management and will make Georgetown University his next stop for an M.S. in finance.