by Samp­son Nan­ton

Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

Two T&T schol­ars have grad­u­at­ed at the top of Howard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Col­lege of En­gi­neer­ing and Ar­chi­tec­ture, hav­ing at­tained the high­est scores pos­si­ble in their com­put­er sci­ence stud­ies.

The achieve­ments have now se­cured Deante Tay­lor, 23, and Ty­rone Smith, 22, jobs as soft­ware en­gi­neers at tech gi­ants Ama­zon and Google re­spec­tive­ly, and they’re al­so pur­su­ing a “pipeline” project that will help oth­er T&T na­tion­als to earn in­tern­ships in the US.

The two young men shared grad­u­a­tion ho­n­ours with US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at Sat­ur­day’s cer­e­mo­ny in Wash­ing­ton, DC.

“Es­sen­tial­ly at Howard, the high­est grade point av­er­age (GPA) you can have is a 4.0 which is es­sen­tial­ly a per­fect GPA and Ty­rone and I both achieved this grade,” Tay­lor said.

Theirs were not on­ly the high­est grades among com­put­er sci­ence ma­jors, but the high­est grades of the en­tire col­lege.

Tay­lor, who at­tend­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, was the win­ner of an Open Schol­ar­ship in Math­e­mat­ics in 2019 but could not ac­cept it be­cause of fi­nan­cial con­straints. He sought an al­ter­na­tive.

“What ac­tu­al­ly got me my schol­ar­ship to Howard was my SAT scores, so I end­ed up get­ting a full ride to Howard,” he said.

Smith, a grad­u­ate of St Mary’s Col­lege, Port-of-Spain, was al­so do­ing the SAT ex­ams which earned him “a very large schol­ar­ship” from Howard.

The two strangers would form a con­nec­tion through an on­line fo­rum that start­ed their jour­ney to the top of acad­e­mia and cre­at­ed a strong broth­er­hood bond.

The awards given to Tyrone Smith for attaining the highest GPAs in Computer Science and in the College of Engineering and Architecture.

Apart from hav­ing to adapt to the new en­vi­ron­ment, Tay­lor faced par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges at the start of his stud­ies.

“My mom wasn’t work­ing at the time and a cou­ple years be­fore go­ing to Howard my dad got in­to an ac­ci­dent that left him paral­ysed and he was the bread­win­ner. So a lot of things were go­ing wrong,” he said.

His first class, too, would test his strength and the met­tle of their new­ly formed com­radery.

“We’re do­ing Com­put­er Sci­ence, I am a Com­put­er Sci­ence ma­jor, tell me why on the first day of class I have no work­ing lap­top? I’m in the class and I’m like, ‘Ty­rone, can I bor­row your lap­top please?’ And I think, for al­most half the first se­mes­ter, I was just in class and I’d be like, ‘Ty­rone, you’re done? Let me bor­row it and just keep my fin­gers mov­ing,” Tay­lor said.

Smith pulled through for his Tri­ni “part­ner in crime”, as they called each oth­er, re­call­ing his re­ac­tion to Tay­lor’s re­quest.

“It re­al­ly opened my eyes . . . you know some­times we can be in our own world study­ing aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and not be aware of oth­er chal­lenges that your fel­low class­mates or friends might be fac­ing. I was lucky enough to have a lap­top that I could use for the pro­gramme but at the time he was still wait­ing on fund­ing from the school as part of his schol­ar­ship.

“Just see­ing him strug­gle but at the same time, him be­ing so per­sis­tent and want­i­ng to per­se­vere that he’d asked me, a guy who I just met on­line, didn’t know each oth­er, to bor­row my lap­top, I ad­mired that,” Smith said.

The two went on to leave their marks be­yond aca­d­e­mics, be­com­ing the founders of the Howard Uni­ver­si­ty rug­by team and the Howard Uni­ver­si­ty E-Sports Foun­da­tion.

“It was the first of its kind on cam­pus so nav­i­gat­ing stuff like get­ting spon­sors, set­ting up tour­na­ments, even get­ting equip­ment was time-con­sum­ing. In the end, it did work out. We were able to net­work and get spon­sor­ship from Ver­i­zon so they ac­tu­al­ly built our gam­ing lab at Howard,” Tay­lor said.

Ver­i­zon al­so gave them US$100,000 to give out to women play­ing games at that time.

Through Tay­lor’s lead­er­ship, Howard Uni­ver­i­ty al­so de­vel­oped an E-Sports com­pe­ti­tion in the US Mid­dle East­ern Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence and has won every com­pe­ti­tion since.

Deante Taylor

As the founder of the Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Rug­by team, Smith said they’re now work­ing to get T&T stu­dents on ath­let­ic schol­ar­ships and are cre­at­ing link­ages be­tween Howard rug­by coach­es and T&T rug­by play­ers.

Shar­ing the grad­u­a­tion stage with Pres­i­dent Biden and PM Row­ley was a spe­cial mo­ment for them.

“The on­ly way to de­scribe that feel­ing was a sense of pride see­ing not on­ly the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States but see­ing our own prime min­is­ter be­ing ac­knowl­edged for his con­tri­bu­tions and then in that same breath re­ceive an award along­side him,” Smith said.

He’s en­cour­ag­ing young peo­ple to pur­sue their dreams by putting their all to­wards it.

“This is not just re­served for us. I think it is some­thing any­one can achieve if they put their mind to it. This just goes to show that some­one com­ing from any part of Trinidad and To­ba­go can work and be recog­nised on a stage as large as this,” Smith said.

Tay­lor’s vi­sion is the same.

“The biggest thing life has taught me is to be dis­ci­plined. I think with dis­ci­pline you can reach very, very far in life. I have had a lot of friends that could work some­thing in one day, 10 sec­onds, 10 days, but what’s the com­mon fac­tor to all these suc­cess­ful peo­ple? They were dis­ci­plined enough to put in the work,” Tay­lor said.

As they now seek to de­vel­op their ca­reers, they have pur­posed to al­so de­vel­op the “pipeline” project which has al­ready brought five stu­dents and their fam­i­lies to the US for in­tern­ships, which they hope will cre­ate more op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­er T&T na­tion­als.

Tyrone Smith during his studies at Howard University.