Former WSC athletes make impact in their home countries
Posted: Oct 19 2022
WILLISTON, N.D. – Two former international Williston State College basketball players are making an impact in their home countries, one megabyte at a time.
Pierre NKADA, a native of Cameroon, and Clevon Dunbar, a native of Trinidad, with the help of WSC faculty, IT department and many others, helped to deliver much needed laptop computers to schools in their native countries.
Pierre approached Lance Olson, former Math & Sciences Department Chair, regarding what WSC does with its E-waste. This conversation turned into a bigger conversation of seeing what can be done through the North Dakota University System to clear the computers, and with the help of WSC, to donate the computers.
Once proper approval was given, WSC’s IT program and IT department, went to work to prepare the computers for their journey overseas.
“The students cleaned the hard drives, reinstalled a Windows operating system and added open-source software to the computers. This was a great learning experience, since they were going to a place where students need computers,” said Professor of Technology, Ken Quamme.
The computers presented by Pierre went to a K-8 school in Cameroon and the computers presented by Clevon were given to a special needs school for children with Autism in Trinidad.
"On behalf of COPLEG (College Privé Laïc Effa Gaston), we want to say thank you to the Higher Education Board, Williston State College, Lance Olson and Kim Weismann for the opportunity that was given to that school in Yaoundé-Cameroon. Some children over there only had ideas about what a laptop looks like, but because of the opportunity that was given, they now get to work on one,” said NKADA.