Janpreet Singh is an international graduate student in Marist's MSIS program. He is expecting to complete his degree and graduate in May of 2017.

Please tell us about your previous education including major, degree, and college/university attended. 
I majored in Bachelor of Technology (B. Tech) in Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India.

Tell us about your professional history before coming to Marist. 
Before coming to Marist, I worked in Operations for 7 months for a small manufacturing firm in Punjab, India, after working as a Teaching Assistant at an Electronics Engineering college in New Delhi, India for 18 months. Since being here in New York, I have worked as a Data Analyst intern for Geodis SCO, in Poughkeepsie.

What are your short and longer term career goals? 
I love insights and managing projects. So, my short-term goal is to work as a Data Scientist and look after multiple projects simultaneously from start to finish and watch them grow as I challenge and push myself out of my comfort zone until I meet the goal.

My long-term goal is to make a difference in the world. I religiously believe no idea is small, and that ideas can leave footprints which inspire millions of people to follow and create a ripple effect. You just have to infect the dreamers with your dream. 

Why did you choose to pursue your graduate degree at Marist? 
Marist is a small school and that means better teacher to student interaction, which is very important for graduate studies. Additionally, the accreditations and ranking, the beautiful Hudson River Valley and its proximity to New York City, were some of the major reasons for Marist to be the perfect fit for me.

Tell us about a project or course that was particularly meaningful to your professional development? 
At Marist, I worked on projects for Data Mining, Data Management, and Decision Support Systems. I created an Artificial Neural Network based data model for the ethical dilemma of a self-driving car, predictive models for prices of items in New York City based on R, and a cue-triggered motivation based machine learning model. I want to emphasize that I made the effort of going outside of the curriculum of the class to meet the goals in all three projects. These three projects were meaningful to me because I challenged my knowledge and skills with them and went ahead to learn something new. After the first project, I knew I would want to do it to all my future projects because learning something new and creating results is the only fun you can ever produce from a project.

Tell us about career development opportunities you have participated in through Marist. 
I have made very good relationships with my professors. I am proud of these because I believe these relationships will last long after graduation. I’m a very communicative and friendly person, so networking is not at all difficult for me. In fact, I was the first international graduate student in the junior senate in the Students Government Association (Thanks to Brandon Lee Heard) on campus. Marist has helped me shape my personality. As an international graduate student, I struggled with making friends on campus, and I hung out in different clubs, I auditioned for Me Too Monologues and the HuMarists, I started showing up at Pre-Law Club, SEED, Asian Alliance, BSU, and ARCO general meetings, even though I did not get any priority points. The whole idea was to keep showing up again and again until people recognize you, and I ended up doing Spoken Word Poetry for a couple of clubs and on MCTV’s Later Tonight Show, and so quite a handful of students have come to know me on-campus. This whole experience broke the shell I was in as an international Indian student and helped me overcome the cultural shock tremendously. I've met some incredible people and I made some good friendships. I worked as a Teaching Assistant for Professor Christopher Algozzine for a while and he is not only a great mentor but a very good friend to me. He's advised me wisely on my career decisions and helped me when I was in doubt. In terms of Career Services, I used Marist’s Resume development and Mock-interview services and they also helped me a great deal. Marist gave me opportunities to work as a Tutor on campus which helped me connect with other students and a Technical Consultant for the Academic Technology (Thanks to Dede Hourican) which was my first interaction with American work culture. Then I was an Orientation Leader too! And last but not the least the Center for Multicultural Affairs (Thanks to Karen Tomkins) always had my back in regards to events related to my culture or community.

All in all, I made many connections at Marist and I hope to carry them forward with me wherever I go.

What advice would you give to other international students considering a graduate degree at Marist?
Marist offers a great education at low cost and is very flexible with the curriculum. The professors are very helpful and the community is supportive. Make lots of friends, get involved on campus. Get to know your classmates and never lose hope, you will not get this time again. I know a lot of students will come to Marist with the biggest dreams. I would like to tell them it will not be easy, but studying responsibly and getting a good grade will help you after graduation. And dreams do get true, never stop believing in yourself.

If you took an online class or had online learning as part of a regular course, tell us about your experiences – any tips or suggestions to pass along to future students?
I took five online classes. Here’s what I’ve learned from them: always keep up with the weekly announcements, post in the discussion forums as soon as it is open, always cite your references, do not copy from another student, make the best use of online sharing tools for group projects, and the professors are very helpful, so, when in doubt just ask.

Please feel free to provide additional comments:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts. I wish future students good luck and want to remind them to never hesitate to step up and make a change.