University of Advancing Technology's Official Technology Blog

Tell me a little about yourself.

My name is Christelle Deborah Cyprian. I'm actually from Haiti. I've lived in a total of four different states, but I moved to Arizona three years ago from Miami, Florida. When I moved here, I came to UAT to study Virtual Reality starting in January of 2020, and ending in August of 2022. 

After graduating from UAT in August of 2022, I ended up working here as a Program Support Specialist. And I love it here. I help professors and students in different ways. When it comes to students, I help with time management, reaching out to professor's and finding resources. When it comes to the professors just anything that they need, if they need assistance with grading, checking PowerPoints, checking content, and doing like a lot of just kind of like backend work like checking on students and things like that. 

You are working on your master's now, what are you studying? 

So I decided to go with the Technology Leadership master's program. One of my goals is to become a professor, and in order to do that, you do have to get your masters. But the tech leadership degree really caught my attention, because I'm really interested in just planning. I'm a big planner, I love to plan I’m always like “just give me a minute, let me get my calendar”! So with tech leadership, I'll be able to learn different methods in order to run different projects. So that's why I thought that would be the perfect degree for me, and that way I get experience as well. So when I'm ready to teach, I'm able to use what I've learned and apply that to the classroom as well.

What are your goals after graduating? 

So after graduating my master's, honestly, I think I always wanted to be at UAT even if it ends up being adjunct, full time, whatever it is, I just think I can see myself being here forever. So I'm interested in VR, which I have my undergrad in. But I'm also really into Bible history and just history in general. So but um, so I guess let's say outside of UAT, I would want to stick with you at first. So at UAT, I would definitely be interested in teaching a VR course. I would also love to use the skills learned here at when it comes to VR, tech leadership and game design, in order to create a biblical VR application. So even if that's on my own, or helping a company by working to make those applications, that's something I would definitely be interested in. 

What stood out in your education at UAT?

What really stands out to me about my educational experience at UAT is that there's always someone here to help and make it very accessible for you to reach out when you need to. They really provide you with a lot of resources, whether that's a person or the things that we have on campus, you know, so it never felt like oh, I'm lost. I don't know what to do. There's always someone there for you. Starting from applying to UAT, up until now, the professors and all of the resources at the school are wonderful and very supportive. 

What does it mean to you to be a student at UAT and a graduate of UAT?

I would say two phrases that come to mind are the term lifelong learner as well as innovator. I don't think those are words I would I use to describe myself in the past, but just coming here within just my first week here, I had to come up with a concept and in two weeks and come up with a working game do this. So those are two words that I definitely started identifying myself with because of just the way our assignments are structured to make us think outside of the box. So I would say that's what I definitely got with from my undergrad. Now at the graduate level, I can just take all of the ideas that I thought of and apply my knowledge to help create a better world.