Computer science student triumphs over tough times to graduate with top honors
Carlos Williams says engineering has given him a more profound sense of purpose. Courtesy photo
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable fall 2024 graduates.
The small town of San Luis, Arizona, is tucked away in the southwestern-most tip of the state, just a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, a short drive from the old Yuma Territorial Prison and current home of the Arizona State Prison Complex, one of the area’s top employers. Carlos Williams grew up there in a family headed by his single mother.
In the summer between his sophomore and junior years in high school, Williams nearly died in a car accident. Struggling to recover from difficult injuries, he left high school without graduating. He took odd jobs, working at a call center, in a factory and as a busser at a restaurant.
He hoped for something more.
“My mother is a first-generation immigrant from Mexico,” Williams says. “She was forced to drop out of school in the seventh grade. I wanted to make sure that her sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.”
Williams earned his GED. A fan of electronic gaming, he asked himself what it took to make video games — how they were developed, coded and produced. He began to think about a university degree. He found the informatics program in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. But he wondered if he should even bother to apply.
Encouraged by family and friends, he did.
Williams had one big advantage in his favor. The Gadsden School District where he was a student has a nationally recognized program in place to encourage seventh and eighth graders to prepare for the ACT exam. Williams had taken the test and his scores were strong.
He was admitted to the Fulton Schools and has never looked back.
Today, Willams is being hailed as an Outstanding Graduate. During his studies, he made the dean’s list six times. He successfully finished a summer internship at Iridium Communications and then was hired as a part-time software engineer. He completed numerous programming and gaming projects, created a Python-based Spotify playlist user data scraper and worked on back-end tools to improve the development process.
Although Williams was initially inspired by an appreciation for video games, he does not plan to pursue a job in that industry. He says that he’s really connected with a love of coding. He would like to continue at Iridium but is also open to other opportunities.
“Engineering gave me the tools to seek out a deeper, more profound purpose,” Williams says. “Instead of just working to support myself financially, I’m now striving to establish a career in software engineering.”
As ASU's fall 2024 convocation approaches, we asked Williams to share some of his favorite things:
- Hobby: Dungeons & Dragons.
- Band: Queens of the Stone Age.
- Last book read: "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delany.
- Movie: "Bladerunner."
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