In March 2007, TKG was introduced to Stark State student and local resident Josh McDermitt.  Josh was recommended to us from one of his professors at Stark State and began part-time employment in our “After Hours” program shortly thereafter.  Josh already had two years of web development in high school, two more years in college, and a Webmaster certification from Hocking Technical College, so we had high hopes that he would do well in our program.

From the get-go, Josh excelled in whatever projects we sent his way.  He already knew his way about a computer pretty well, but even more impressive to us, he listened and followed directions really, really well.  In fact, Josh did so well with the small projects we gave him (website changes, cutting and coding HTML, etc) that we offered him a full-time summer internship.  Josh did well in that role, too, and slowly took on more responsibility, including doing some programming and project management.  In August 2007, we offered him a full-time paid staff position. 

Josh is the first of what we hope are many, many TKG Institute success stories.  His story is exactly what we envisioned when we created the Institute.  We hope that we have dozens more like him who succeed in the program and go on to work here or in other tech positions in Northeast Ohio.  Maybe we can do away with the notion of Brain Drain after all - one student at a time.