PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (January 7, 2019) – Three Prairie View A&M University undergraduates are among 80 students from across the globe currently in Tel Aviv, Israel taking part in the 2020 TAVtech Fellowship, an intensive five-week program in data science and cybersecurity.
Bryanna Barnett from Plano, Texas, and Britny Clayton-Mitchell of Austin, are seniors majoring in finance, and Olumide Longe, is a senior chemical engineering major from Lagos, Nigeria. They are spending Dec. 22, 2019, to Jan. 19, 2020, in Tel Aviv going through a technology boot camp that will equip them with high-demand skills in data science and cybersecurity.
Longe said the three of them being selected as TAVtech fellows feels like déjà vu.
“I have actually known Britny and Bryanna about two years now, from when I transferred to Prairie View,” Longe recalled. “I met them at a PV Investment Club meeting.”
Although he’s an engineering major, Longe will use the opportunity to learn more about the Middle East and network with some investors or people interested in starting companies. He said it would help with his long-term career plans of being an entrepreneur when he returns to Nigeria upon graduating from PVAMU.
“I’m hoping to understand the technology landscape in the Middle East, and Israel especially, and see how their landscape and things going on out there can be transferred back home,” he explained. “Also, to connect with other students on a personal level to make sure I [can] learn as much as I can from students coming from other schools and develop my programming skills, which is a major reason why I’m going out there.”
During the boot camp, students will undergo intensive, full-day training in sessions conducted by successful entrepreneurs, industry professionals, and tech faculty practitioners from Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and Technion – the Israel Institute of Technology. They will learn coding, data science and analytics for beginners, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, big data, and virtual reality.
For Clayton-Mitchell, this intense training will help her to expand her life and career experiences.
“It’s always been a goal for me to study abroad,” she said with excitement. “I’ve been getting more and more involved in the technical aspect of innovation and entrepreneurship and the importance of technology in this futurism time. As a finance major, I don’t really get my hands dirty a lot with technology, so this is a great opportunity for me to do that.”
And her application showcased she was more than just a finance major. Her resume included spending the summer of 2019 in Michigan interning with Dow Chemical in its Cost Processing Technology Center. “I worked a lot on technical work processes, utilizing business intelligence tools to help make business decisions for the business side of the cost accounting,” she said.
And, as the youngest of three girls, this fellowship opportunity proved to a challenge for Clayton-Mitchell and her mother.
“My mom is just freaking out. She’s happy for me but is still pretty nervous. My two sisters are in disbelief. They’re excited for me. They can’t believe I’m going out of the country for this long,” she shared. “I’ve never been out of the country—outside of a cruise—and have never lived, adapted, or integrated into another culture. But I’m ready to submit myself to the culture and just meet people, of course. Try new things, try new foods, and be as open-minded as possible.”
Clayton-Mitchell said she learned of TAVtech Fellowship when her classmate, Bryanna Barnett, sent her the link about the program. For Barnett, being away from home for Christmas was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
“Christmas is my biggest holiday. I always organize our families’ festivities and activities. And my little brother was asking, ‘Who’s going to set up the gingerbread competition?’ But I’m at a period in my life where I want to explore, and I want to take advantage of that. Even though they are going to miss me, my family has been supportive.”
International travel is not new for Barnett, whom we caught up with at Bush – Houston International Airport before she boarded a flight to Nairobi, to her mother’s country of Kenya, before heading to Tel Aviv. Her dad is Jamaican.
“Just talking to mentors and my parents, they encouraged me to branch out and try new things and see other parts of the world. The world is so interconnected; there are so many different cultures, and to be able to take that with me into the business world [when I graduate] is priceless.”
There is a cost involved in being a TAVtech Fellow. The students had to complete an online application and write a lengthy essay about why they wanted to be a fellow. For those chosen, there was a $550 participation fee, which covered the cost for the training and housing. Students had to pay for their travel to Israel and any personal excursions.
All three say the cultural, personal, and career experience they will gain was worth the cost.
“I created a GoFundMe. I actually explained what I will be doing and why this is beneficial to my career. If God provides, I’m going to go. And surely He did provide,” Clayton-Mitchell shared. “I would like to not come back the same. I don’t want to have a closed-off American mindset.”
Longe found others to invest in him.
“I knew the fee, and I was able to pay that myself. But any other cost I had to pay for the program I raised money from friends, he said. “I’ve been to the Middle East before, but it wasn’t to Israel. I actively cultivate meeting people from different backgrounds just to have a wider view of how the world really is. So, I’m really hoping to connect on a deeper level and understand the culture of people there from Israel.”
Barnett applied for a scholarship program from the U.S. Department of State to cover her studies.
“To be competitive in this field [of finance], it requires that you do the extra work to stand out and gain experiences that you can bring to the table that makes you a diverse person,” Barnett explained about her expanding interest in technology. “Big tech firms like Google and Microsoft, they really emphasize not just diversity of being a minority, but the diversity of thought, experience, and background, and being able to add to the discussion. For me, this program checks off both of those boxes of getting a completely different experience of a different culture and how they navigate and make things happen, but also to give me a different skill set that I can bring to the table on a professional level throughout my career.”
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By Michael Douglas