Dancy, Alanté

Alanté Dancy is a first-year master’s student at Virginia Tech studying electrical engineering. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in December 2016. He is enthusiastic about his major because he feels that he learns something new about the world every single day. During his first two years at Virginia Tech he was a member of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and worked on the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT). Through these experiences he gained friends and hands-on training. Now, he focuses most of his time outside of his classes on the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) as the Vice President, and in the Multifunctional Integrated Circuits and Systems (MICS) Lab. His work there involves designing, building, and testing an electromagnetic generator and circuit to harvest vibrations on a bridge.

His engineering focus doesn’t end with the school year; Alanté has spent each summer interning at a different company. After his freshman year he worked at General Motors in Milford, Michigan in the electric drive component development and validation group. He received valuable hands-on experience by designing his own circuit to test electric motors. When not building circuits, he had the opportunity to test vehicles on the track. Following his sophomore year he worked for Verizon in the Kansas City area as part of the transport engineering team, which was responsible for how data traveled between cell towers. He enjoyed traveling throughout Kansas and Missouri doing equipment upgrades on the cell towers. During the summer of 2016, he worked as a business technology analyst for Deloitte Consulting in Arlington, VA. He worked closely with a federal client helping them to migrate their services to the cloud. Alanté’s next adventure is interning for Northrop Grumman in Baltimore, MD during the 2017 summer.

Alanté grew up in the suburbs of Chesapeake, Virginia, where his dad was in the Navy. Fortunately, the family did not have to move around much. He remembers coming aboard his father’s ship when he was very young and seeing the electricians work on the ship. He found this extremely intriguing. At the age of ten, he designed a solar panel and wind generator for his house. Unfortunately, he was not able to bring his designs to fruition because no one was willing to invest and believe in a 10 year old. He still remembers this venture and regrets not being able to fulfill his dream. He believes it is critical to nurture children’s passions and to recognize that they are capable of amazing feats. He still wishes he could recapture the drive he felt as a child.

In high school he took two electronics classes and three physics classes, even though only one was required. He was fortunate to have amazing teachers who answered all of his questions and let him be creative with his projects. These experiences solidified his passion for electrical engineering.

Picking a major and choosing to come to Virginia Tech was a difficult decision for him because he was afraid to be great. He didn’t think he could excel at VT or in engineering. The Marianne Williamson’s quote, which reads in part, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,” really spoke to him as he was making his decision about what to do and where to go. He decided that he would not be afraid and that he would step up to the plate and accept the challenge. His passion from an early age has been electronics, and he is glad that he decided to chase his dreams.