Saint of Santa Fe | Maxim Prokopenko

September 2, 2021

"Technology is everywhere in our lives. As a Research Facilitator and Application Specialist, I help scientists in computer research at the University of Florida's Information Technology Research Computing department. In doing so, I believe my contributions will improve our lives and the world around us.

I was born in Ukraine; my hometown of Cherkasy is a wonderful small town in which I went to school and lived most of my early life. Twelve years ago, as a young adult, I moved to Gainesville with family. I first enrolled at Santa Fe College in 2009, shortly after arriving in the U.S., to take adult basic education classes and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). I continued classes, selecting a computer sciences career path. This was mostly a natural selection for me, as I have always had an interest in technology and enjoy working with computers, programming and computing. At first, I attended SF out of convenience, but quickly fell in love with the campus, small class sizes and deeply passionate professors.

The biggest surprise for me was the amount of knowledge and dedication of SF professors, they are wonderful people that care about students and want them to succeed. They have vast amounts of knowledge and love to teach. For this reason, after completing my A.A. and A.S. degrees, I chose to stay at SF to work towards my bachelor's degree.

For most of my coursework at SF I worked full time while taking classes. There is a fine balance when it comes to this and I admire anyone who manages to do a respectable job at it. I tried my best and luckily, with perseverance, I succeeded. After twelve years of continual enrollment at SF, through commitment and hard work I completed a Bachelor of Applied Science in Information Systems Technology in April 2021.

I would advise anyone to pursue one thing you love and work on it aggressively and you will succeed. "

Maxim Prokopenko, B.A.S Information Systems Technology #SaintsofSF#SaintsofSantaFeCollege