Tim Thiele

Tim Thiele – Fountain-Fort Carson High School, class of 1998

After graduation, Tim attended Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. He currently resides in Henderson, Nevada. He wrote this letter to outline how he felt and the impact the scholarship had on him:

Fountain Valley Scholars Committee,

It has been some time since I thought about the Dollars for Scholars program and the scholarship that I received.  The entire process: from writing an essay, to interviewing, to receiving the award, to using it for my education, still seems surreal.  I still remember being skipped in the award ceremony because the college I chose to attend happened to be one that matched the Dollars for Scholars scholarship, so I was saved for last.  Knowing that my community wanted to invest in my education, I used the scholarship to purchase a computer which I used to write most of my programs for my computer science major.  I also used it for writing all of my papers for other classes, and it was a huge benefit at the time when most students had to share time in the computer labs.  (This was when computers were just beginning to become a household object, but not yet in every student’s dorm room.)  Having access to a computer that was on the internet 24 hours a day saved so much time in looking things up for my science classes, and writing papers.

The scholarship not only accelerated my primary majors of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Computer Science, it also freed my time to participate in extracurricular activities on the college campus.  I was able to be a part of the yearbook staff, and later chair the appropriations committee for our student senate with the computer skills I gained and the additional free time I had because I didn’t have to schedule time in computer labs to write papers or access research materials.

After college I have gone on to work across a wide array of industries, using technology to enhance and automate many functions.  I have worked for plastics manufacturers, hospitals and physician clinics, insurance billing companies, e-commerce providers, web development firms, search engine companies, media outlets, and even an airline.  In all cases my positions have helped other people to better perform at their jobs, and in several cases made companies more profitable in a way that allowed them to re-invest in their personnel.

I have also seen that understanding technology and having an education that goes beyond high school has allowed me to not only weather the storms we have seen in our world economically, it has provided me opportunities to thrive.  Technology jobs have been in demand for years, and the demand is only increasing.  For the last 8 years I have lived in the Las Vegas Valley, and many of my peers have had ups and downs and difficulties finding jobs or changing between industries.  I, on the other hand, have been in situations where I have the choice of doing what I want to do because most places are now dependent on technology in order to be in business today.

My community choosing to invest in my education through the Dollars for Scholars program opened my eyes to see how I can leverage technology to transform the world around me, and for that I will be forever grateful.