Welcome: Sloan Kiechel Student President of FGDC and Social Media Lead at CTeLearning!

Hello! I am Sloan Kiechel, a 19-year-old student at Auburn University. I am the Student President of FGDC and also the Social Media lead at CTeLearning! I have tons of responsibilities here, everything from keeping our social media up to date, to helping judge student submissions for FGDC. I’ve actually been helping out for a little bit, but never got around to introducing myself.

I am a huge animal lover; I have two dogs which you may see in some videos, as they can get rowdy. We at CTeLearning like to refer to them as our interns. Woody is 9 months old and is a Boykin Spaniel Chihuahua mix. He enjoys barking during skype conferences and eating things he shouldn’t. Domino is a 5-year-old Jack Russel/Rat Terrier mix, and he enjoys lounging around during all hours of the day.

That’s all I took for electives. I think I took one non-CTE class because I literally ran out of technology classes to take. When I started working with Steve, he used the word “STEAM” and I was like, “what? It’s STEM”. I then learned about the addition of “Arts” which makes perfect sense honestly. I want to develop video games. But I can’t do art at all. And art is a big part of a game. When I make base code, I literally use color blocks to stand for items until I can find an image to use. I’m sure you would prefer the version with the images than the blocks. So, yeah, I 100% support the addition of Art.

I am a sophomore studying Computer Science at Auburn, and I hope to eventually get a Masters in game programming. I also work at GameStop and as an office helper at Auburn. I really like to stress that people my age do not have to wait until their education is over to start looking for opportunities, or to start making video games. I am only 19, and I already have loads of experience that will help my career progress. And this could easily be any other person my age. All a person has to do is look. There are opportunities everywhere. Steve only found me through a completely unrelated need. I was literally making job postings about every little thing I could do. I believe he found my one about proofreading, and when we got to talking, it became so much more.

That’s all about me! I look forward to helping everyone out and seeing what this year’s Future App and Game Designer Challenge brings!