When Everything Clicked
Math and science came easy to Denesia Mitchell. But when it came to picking a college and career path, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do. “Most people automatically think about going into business, but my parents suggested I think about engineering,” she says. “I never even considered it and didn’t know what it would entail. The whole thing started with me just clicking a button without knowing what I was choosing.”
While exploring her options on New York Institute of Technology’s website, engineering management piqued Mitchell’s interest. “It was the perfect mix between business and engineering,” she says.
Then everything came together when she visited New York Institute of Technology on Preview Day. “I remember we were in NYIT de Seversky Mansion, and they talked through all the majors, answered all our questions, and paid a lot of attention to us and what we needed to know,” she recalls. “I appreciated it because we were about to give the next four years of our lives to this.”
At Preview Day, she spent some time talking to Assistant Professor Dorinamaria Carka, Ph.D. “She was one of the first people I met, and she took her time to explain things,” she says. “If I learned anything about this school, it’s that people do care about you and what you do.”
Mitchell came to understand that engineering management is the middle ground where business and engineering intersect. “I get an introduction to business classes, and I also learn the basics of what mechanical and electrical engineers do,” she says. “I learn how to use different design tools and do things like play with 3-D printers. At the same time, I learn about different processes, such as what goes into creating a business plan.”
Outside of the classroom, Mitchell is a member of the Campus Programming Board (CPB) for which she was president for two years. “I like working with people,” she says. “I played sports all through high school, so I knew I needed to do something else when I got to college. This caught my eye at a Student Involvement Fair. By my second semester, I was made vice president and flew to Orlando, Florida, for a conference.”
Over the summer of 2019, Mitchell interned with Morgan Stanley in the operations department, working with project managers in wealth management. Her responsibilities included project mapping using Signavio, a web-based business processing modeling tool. At the end of her internship, she was offered a full-time position. She is scheduled to begin work in June 2020 as an analyst. “It is a rotational program that gives me the opportunity to explore different positions within operations at Morgan Stanley,” she says. But before she begins her new role, she will continue her studies at New York Tech, where she will pursue a master’s in energy management.
As she reflects on her time at the university and taking a chance on a major that she didn’t know much about, Mitchell says, “I haven’t looked back once since clicking that button.”
