For Tim Connor (CH '83), his present information technology and telecom management position at Hewlett-Packard Company is a result of the second chance he received at BCC almost 20 years ago!
     
    Before BCC, Tim was a very poor student in high school, and had no interest in attending college after graduating.

     He instead elected to serve as a search and rescue patrol boat captain in the US Coast Guard. Tim served for 5 years until he was medically discharged due to his hearing loss, which was degenerative in nature. The job market was weak, and Tim had to retrain and change careers.

     "I decided that the chemical engineering program would be the best for me from a challenge and reward perspective," Tim said. "The … program had a very good record for job placement, and my goal was to quickly get back into the job market and get my career off to a quick start." The college provided support so he could stay in school despite his disability. " (The professors) were very understanding of my hearing impairment, and made accommodations to make sure I could hear the lectures." Though he wore two hearing aides at BCC to communicate, he had a 4.0 his first semester and was a member of Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society.

     Tim was pleased to receive a number of job offers upon graduating from BCC, and he accepted a position in research and development at Anitec in Binghamton. There he tested new generation photographic products and analyzed competitor's products for chemical composition. He went on to IBM and worked as a process control technician, testing and maintaining chemical process specifications for PC circuit boards. He moved on as a research and development technician at International Paper Company where he developed computerized process monitoring tools to track and monitor the paper making process. It was at this job that he began programming computer process models and, as he puts it, "became the 'go to' guy for all computer technology in my engineering group." After traveling extensively around the country to implement a system he developed to record and report paper manufacturing performance reports, Tim had the opportunity to change careers and he began work as an associate systems engineer. He spent 11 years consulting on AT & T projects for a company called Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in New Jersey. Working his way through the company, he stepped up to the position of systems engineer manager, responsible for 4 AT&T projects and 75 engineers.

     This of course was a difficult transition time for the company, when AT&T was divesting itself from the independent regional bells and establishing itself as a long distance carrier. By the time Tim was hired in 1986, AT&T long distance was now billed through these independent regional bell operating companies. He was responsible to verify the $36B in revenue collected through these companies for AT&T and managed the engineers and systems required.

     Tim took time to earn his Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute in 2000, his only formal training beyond BCC. Now at Hewlett-Packard, he provides project management services for information technology and telecom projects for HP customers. He travels extensively to sites on the U. S. Mainland, Hawaii, Australia and Canada.

     All this for a person who, earlier in his life, says he did not have the confidence to get a degree. "My scholastic background was not too promising, but I was gifted with a strong desire to succeed, and I think (BCC) professors recognized that," Tim said. "I don't believe larger institutions would have provided the personal level of commitment shown by the BCC staff. They helped me launch a successful career and I just wanted to say thanks."

  
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