Computer Science Graduate
Computer science graduate 2024 Chenille Lawrence offered this advice to incoming college students: explore new things, give yourself grace, and allow yourself to become the person you are meant to be.
Lawrence took her own advice to heart; in the past five years, she relocated from Jamaica to the U.S., graduated high school for a second time, and navigated the college admissions process. She funded her UIC education through scholarships, changed majors, sought leadership roles at UIC, obtained her bachelor of science degree, and landed a job as a software engineer.
Lawrence was introduced to UIC through the CHANCE Program, an initiative designed to assist the university with its goal of increasing recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of underrepresented students. She learned about the program from her high school counselor and took an introductory computer science summer course for college credit before she began at UIC and was part of their first Digital Scholar cohort. The CHANCE Program offers scholarships through corporate partnerships, which funded her first year. She was then named a ComEd Scholar, which provided funding to complete her degree.
“What I liked about UIC was the level of support I felt,” Lawrence said. “There are so many groups that help you succeed.”
She completed internships at Braven, Morningstar, and Google. She also worked as a Discovery Partnership Institute research scholar on their net zero infrastructure research team.
Lawrence started her career this summer as a software engineer with John Deere in the West Loop neighborhood in Chicago.