WSU ‘a step above’ in applied learning, student support, says senior

Growing up on a farm in the tiny town of Udall, Kansas—population 641—Hyler Green relied on the family computer as his portal to far-away places and the source of answers to his never-ending stream of questions about the world.

“I was always a very curious kid, constantly asking my mom questions about the way things worked,” Green, senior at Wichita State, says with a smile. “Probably around the time I was four or five, she showed me how to use a computer and said, ‘Here, Google can tell you!’”

Since then, he hasn’t slowed down asking questions or seeking out answers.

Green enrolled at Wichita State in the fall of 2022 to pursue his love for computer engineering. Despite his excitement, he worried about falling behind in his studies, lost among the hundreds of faces in his lecture halls. His fears were allayed when his lecturer, Manira Rani, went out of her way to help him better comprehend the subject material in a particularly difficult course, assembly language programming.

“I came up to her after class, and I just remember feeling this instant support,” he says. “I had this assumption that my professors would be too busy teaching huge classes to help one individual student, but my experience in the College of Engineering couldn’t be more different from that. I’ve always felt seen.”

Green says that kind of support is evident across the entire campus community, where he’s gotten connected through a breadth of student support resources. “From mental health services to classroom tutoring to individualized instruction from my professors—there are no barriers to receiving the help you need to be successful here,” Green says. “It has made me realize that Wichita State is a step above in terms of accessibility.”

Assured of his capability to thrive in his studies, Green sought out opportunities to take his education beyond the walls of the classroom, eventually landing an internship at The Smart Factory by Deloitte located on the university’s Innovation Campus. Just a few minutes’ walk from his dorm room, Green says the close proximity of the university’s corporate partnerships has been “helpful in more ways than one.”

Green’s role as a cybersecurity analyst for the professional services firm has allowed him to gain hands-on experience in his field of study. He spends his days setting up networks, getting servers functional and troubleshooting tech. “Even in the short amount of time I’ve worked there, the classroom instruction just makes so much more sense when it’s applied to a real-world computer engineering context,” he says. “It makes my education feel more complete.”

Green says the opportunity is not only helping him apply his knowledge, but gain new industry acumen altogether. “The more I learn, the more it becomes obvious to me that I’m just getting started,” he says.

And for the WSU senior and his lifelong inquisitive streak, that prospect is perhaps the most exciting of all.