Andrena Nichols '17

The first thing that Andrena Nichols tells someone she notices struggling in the computer lab is this: “That computer can’t do anything until you tell it to.” “When someone first comes to the lab and is discouraged and just starting, I never put my hands on the keyboard to show somebody something,” said Andrena, a Computer Networking Systems and Cyber Security major and lab monitor, who graduated in May 2017. “I tell them what to do so they’ll know and let them go ahead and do it.”

There’s a big difference between when she first talks to a student in the lab and when she sees them later in the semester. “There was one young woman who I saw early in the semester who was a wreck. Now when I see her, she has the brightest smile like ‘I got this.’ ”

The same might be said for Andrena, who has remained committed to finishing up her degree while dealing with a lung cancer diagnosis (only taking one semester off for surgery). She started at the College in Fall 2012 as a part-time student, having relocated to Schenectady from Virginia after retiring from a career in business administration at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Va.

She decided to follow a passion she’s had since the early 1990s. “I always had a love for computers,” this mother of two and grandmother of five explained. “I always wanted to know what was behind the networking and to find out how it all works.”

Andrena already earned her certificate in Computer Repair and Networking in 2014. After graduation she plans to work in the field while having her own computer repair business.