About Vance Algeria
Little Vance Algeria with his parents Scott and Cheryl Algeria
Vance Algeria, Born July 12, 2004 in Coral Springs, Florida, is a Computer Scientist currently pursuing a Computer Science Bachelors degree at the University of Central Florida.
Vance Algeria began his journey working with technology in December of 2016, when he was walking out of his middle school library to exit the school, noticing the middle school tech guy doing maintenance on a school computer cart in a back room. Vance walked up to the back room and asked what the tech guy was doing, and to the polite surprise, the tech guy invited him to see what was going on. The tech guy, Marc Desruisseaux, was re-imaging the school computers with a new mandatory district security update. Vance was instantly interested in what was happening and spent 2 hours helping Marc out. The mentorship grew into an amazing learning experience for Vance about the IT industry of mass organizations and schools. Vance learned about networking switches, bandwidth, different activity directory management systems such as organizational units, group policy updates, user account role privilege systems, and much more.
School laptops being re-imaged
Marc, who was also a teacher at the time and the schools only tech, was extremely busy doing the documentation and planning of all of the computer carts in the school. So Marc brought in different students from time to time to assist in the efforts of maintaining the school technology. This was a very creative idea as not only did it take off some of the load of tasks for Marc, but it also led him to mentor many students and teach them about computers and IT, which alone are very good skills to have today. The skills also weren't just any tech skills, but for Vance, also included speaking and communicating to teachers in a non-technical way while being polite and honest.
High school main distribution frame patch panel back and termination point
During the rest of his time at his middle school, Vance would work on many different issues around the school such as helping teachers fix their printers and installing required software on computers, rewiring computer carts, as well as working in network closets to activate ports for phones in different locations, and setting up testing computers for the FSA. There were also other side projects such as helping another teacher, Winston Clarke, with the management and updates of engineering and GMetrix training software on his classroom computers. Eventually in the second half of his 7th grade year, Vance was tasked with updating every single computer cart in the entire school (about 60 different computer carts), with the new Windows 10 1709 update, which patched major security vulnerabilities within Windows 10 and was being mandated by the district to update to. With classes and a busy schedule, Vance finished 1 cart a day and was the well-known face who returned the computer cart back to teachers after the required updates were made. Towards the end of 7th grade, Vance had finished with updating all of the computer carts and went on to help during the summer for no volunteer hours or money, simply because it was fun and it helped people. Through 8th grade, Vance would prepare some of the schools brand new computer labs and would meet many more teachers during that year.
Rewiring the chargers of a computer cart
At the end of his time in middle school, Vance knew every single teacher in the school and was a very familiar face within the school. As the most network connected person in the school, Vance received certificates at the school's 8th grade awards celebration and later moved onto high school.
High school phone and ethernet wall port
During the summer before high school, Vance met the tech people at his high school, Jose Garcia and Leighton Williams, working with them for the rest of the summer and getting familiar with the technology at the school. One thing Vance noticed about his high school was that the technology there was far more outdated than the tech in his middle school, which was due to the difference in support and priorities of the school leadership. At the time, his middle school was in a district pilot program ahead of most other schools, while his high school was behind in technology funding. Most of the computers in Vance's high school were older Lenovo x131e Series computers, much older than the Lenovo N23 tablet computers at his middle school. Vance mentioned that "the x131e had a hinge problem, so often students would break the computers while opening and moving the LCD screen." Vance would later realize how the power of leadership and funding in schools could affect the modernization of technology within them, becoming almost an advocate for upgrading technology when needed.
High school main distribution frame APC system
For the rest of his years in high school, Vance would go through many different tech personnel, a total of 6 to be exact. Because his Sophomore year was hit with the Coronavirus, Vance was separated from tech opportunities for a far while and ended up meeting different tech people on the other side of the epidemic. Because of this process though, Vance learned a lot about mentoring others himself as well. These various quick changes within the high school's tech personnel led to now unknowledgeable management systems without prior training from predecessors. Vance still knew how these systems worked, and took the opportunity to show the new tech people how they worked. First was the school's telecom closets, containing both ethernet and phone connections. Vance taught the new techs how you could activate ports in a classroom using a main and intermediate distribution frame. After that was reimaging computers, updating systems to print, and managing software in several classrooms.
High school main distribution frame patch panel front
Vance also had 2 different Computer Science classes in high school with Kristina A. Missey-Wong, who taught a majority of the must-knows about programming and logical understanding in a program using Code.org, Edhesive, and Scratch. During this time, Vance gained interest in Computer Science and how computers worked in our everyday modernization. Learning Java and Python, Vance would design programs in class to solve everyday problems and showcase the creative art of planned software design.
Vance Algeria high school graduation picture
While Vance loved IT, and with the new Computer Science classes, for college he decided to go into the field of Computer Science for the challenge and new opportunities that would arise. "Computers are used everyday in our world now, and not only does it bring me a challenge, but it also helps me balance out my knowledge table of technology," said Vance. Throughout college, this challenge has become real, but with the help and support of Professors, TAs, and peers throughout all of his classes, the challenge has been conquered. Vance says that the most helpful people to practice with is your own classroom peers, because they are often going through the same struggles as you and you can work together to better understand the material, especially in preparation for exams.
Equivalence relations homework problem solution
Over the current three years he's been at UCF, Vance has learned about Dynamic Memory Allocation, Linked Lists, Counting, Probability, Induction, Number Theory, Relations, Queues, Stacks, Recursion, Computer Arithmetic, Sequential Logic, MIPS, Binary Search, Algorithm Analysis, Recurrence Relations, Sorting, Binary Trees, Bitwise Operators, AVL Trees, Binary Heaps, Tries, Hash Tables, Backtracking, Object Oriented Programming, Git, Sprints, Scrum, and much more. While there isn't as detailed of a story to tell for Computer Science, the one takeaway about Computer Science from Vance is that anyone can program, and Computer Science is not just about programming. Many people have this understanding that Computer Science is interchangeable with programming, but it's not. Computer Science is understanding why the program worked, designing and planning software, engineering for more efficiency, and documenting the progress you've made along the way. A significant amount of the Computer Science courseload is math, logical thinking, and planning, not programming.
Recurrence relations problem and solution
Vance eventually wants to touch on Cybersecurity and learn more about what it takes to keep the online world safe from hackers and cyberattacks. He is looking forward to possibly taking a masters in Cybersecurity and Privacy at the University of Central Florida. Cybersecurity uses two of Vance's favorite topics, IT and Computer Science, and he wants to use both of these to make the world a better place.
Vance Algeria
Vance would like to thank his parents, friends, and family for always supporting him through all of the challenges of this journey and for celebrating his success. He one day hopes to innovate new software that could change the world and solve a huge problem.