NJIT Gets Chapter of Google Developer Student Club

NJIT now has a chapter of the Google Developer Student Club.

Google formed the international organization two years ago to teach real-world information technology skills that aren't necessarily taught in college classrooms. It's also a way for the software giant to promote its products and recruit new employees.

"Developer Student Club launched in 2017 as a pilot in India to help solve the challenges university graduates were facing securing employment in the tech industry. We aimed to provide students with the resources, opportunities and experience necessary to be industry-ready, all while still pursuing their degrees," said Daniel Fiorillo, a Google Cloud program manager, based in Austin, Texas.

The chapter president is Simon Lam, a junior in the Ying Wu College of Computing who's pursuing a B.S. in computing and business. Lam said he is actively working to get the chapter officially recognized as an NJIT student club. He got involved after receiving messages from Google via his LinkedIn account and his college email. At first he was skeptical of the messages' legitimacy, but quickly came to realize the inquiries were real.

Google flew Lam to its California headquarters in October along with a few dozen students from other schools. "My schedule there was essentially a weekend-long workshop," running from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day, he said. The agenda included leadership skills and deep-dives into Google Cloud services.

Lam said he's fond of the Google Firebase mobile application development platform. He also said it's useful to program Google services using shell scripting along with languages such as C, Java and Python. Now, he is planning to have students work as software development interns for startups participating in the NJIT VentureLink program. He also would like to involve students from other NJIT communities such as the colleges of architecture and management.

A group website will soon go live at www.dsc-njit.com. Interested students can currently chat at dsc-njit.slack.com. Lam said he can be reached directly at dsc.njit@gmail.com.

For now, he said, "I just want all of the people who are interested to start talking to each other."

The club has more than 700 chapters worldwide and 124 in the United States. There are two in New Jersey — here at NJIT and at Ramapo College located in Mahwah. Chapters at Drew University in Madison and at the Rutgers campuses here in Newark and Camden are being planned.