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Volleyball has enabled NJIT’s Mason-William Matos to represent the Dominican Republic, see the world and express himself with joy.

As a teenager, he played on Dominican Republic national teams, making him a seasoned setter for the Highlanders when he arrived in 2019. Four years later, the mathematical sciences major from the Class of 2023 is poised to join BNY Mellon in New York as a risk and compliance analyst.

Constance Chu’s passion for interior design started at a young age, assisting her mother — an interior designer — in picking samples and colors. Thanks to this early exposure, Chu trained a design muscle that has evolved into an education and career.

“That's just kind of always been what I've been surrounded by,” said the interior design senior and Albert Dorman scholar. “It instilled in me a sort of eye for design that I've been training over the years like picking out details in spaces that maybe other people don't see, and really understanding what that does to space. 

New Jersey Institute of Technology will award more than 3,500 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at its 107th commencement across two days of celebration. The university also will award three honorary degrees and welcome guest speakers.

During her four years at NJIT, Haylee Merola has used her imagination and visualization to create different types of work in her interior design studios. Whether the project was a sci-fi movie, a retail store, an airport lounge or designing clothing for a fashion show, Merola always made sure to add her style.

Gabriel Arcanjo's NJIT journey took him full-circle, from attending a Saturday game development program as a high school student to teaching in the same program as a college senior.

Arcanjo graduates in the Class of 2023 with a B.S. in information technology and starts his career as an application developer for ADP, a giant in the payroll software industry and prominent sponsor of NJIT career fairs and hackathon events.

A marquee event during Inauguration Week was the Scholarship Reception and Networking event, which invites generous benefactors who have created scholarships at the university to engage directly with the student beneficiaries at a celebratory luncheon.

The event humanizes and demonstrates the impact of giving back and removing a financial burden to those who may need it most, as President Teik C. Lim told his own story of how a scholarship changed his, and subsequently his family’s life.

Some of NJIT’s brightest up-and-coming researchers grabbed center stage on campus at the Dana Knox Student Research Showcase, a springtime tradition that continues to highlight student ingenuity and diverse research accomplishments across the university’s six colleges.

For participants of the 18^th annual research competition, it was a special opportunity to connect with the campus community by discussing their recent discoveries and innovations, most of which have been years in the making.

Information technology student Sam Itman has long believed that knowledge and passion for technology can open doors as “it presents a world of opportunities to those who are willing to discover them.” For Itman, these opportunities have led to an impactful internship at Optum and a cybersecurity position with the federal government.