Stan McLenna

Class of 1970 |
  • Computer Science
Computer Science
Where are they now
Carroll College
Snapshot of Stan McLenna

About

Degree: B.A. Computer Science 2010

Current Work:
Earning my Computer Science degree was not the first thing I thought of when I stepped on to the Carroll campus. I had never seen a line of code before and was a total amateur about computers. Over the course of three years (I declared late) I earned my BA in Computer Science in May of 2010. Since then I worked for two major companies: Supervalu and Intel. Although I was a temporary employee, Carroll taught me to take initiative, set my own goals, and follow those timelines. I achieved goals and completed projects outside my job description.

Five months later, I started as a full time employee at Intel Corp as an Application Developer. I write data transformation applications moving data from transactional database systems into a fully normalized database system for reports and business intelligence. The most interesting project I participated in was our pilot program for a near-real-time solution for database applications. Instead of applications running every eight hours refreshing data, they can now run continuously, thereby reducing the wait time for potentially crucial data critical to the company.

Briefly describe a notable memory from your days at Carroll:
There are too many memories to recount (late nights in the lab, jokes in class, etc.) but the memory that I remember vividly was during Cryptography. Phil Rose was introducing us to irreversible functions and said, Give me an example of a situation that cannot be reversed. My example came from a lack of caffeine during an 8 o'clock class, therefore I mentioned, You could pee. I've never seen Phil laugh so hard before, but I guess you have to be there to truly appreciate it.

A piece of advice for prospective Carroll Computer Science students:
A word of advice: if you are considering a CS path, don't be intimidated by the subject. I never took any computer science courses before Carroll and the classes intimidated me; it was a completely foreign field. I communicated with my professors continuously, and they helped me understand the concepts and work through any problems I had. It will be difficult and you will want to quit at times, but it's worth the time and effort.