Washoe Country School District
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Dylan Schindler's Profile
TMCC High Senior Leads By Example
Student: Dylan Schindler
School: Truckee Meadows Community College High School
Like many people, Truckee Meadows Community College High School student Dylan Schindler once cringed at the thought of being a public speaker. He considered himself far too shy and generally avoided most opportunities to get up in front of an audience to make a speech or presentation.
Today, however, one wouldn’t know that he once was so introverted.
“I’m apparently involved with everything,” he said tacitly with a chuckle, but the reality is that Dylan remains heavily involved with his school.
The busy senior will graduate in June with excellent prospects for a career in aerospace engineering.
Dylan is in the student leadership program at TMCC High and keeps himself busy by visiting other schools, participating in the local Lion Club’s annual speech contest and leading campaigns such as the school’s recent Think Kindness Soles4Souls shoe drive for which he coordinated much of the publicity for the event. Under the leadership of Dylan and his fellow students, the Soles4Souls campaign brought in 588 pairs of shoes, far exceeding his expectations.
TMCC High Principal Susan Mayes-Smith called Dylan a “brainiac, but not socially engaged” when he first enrolled in her school.
“He was very quiet and in the shadows,” she said. “He’s leaving TMCC High School as a student leader with the potential to be a community leader, as exemplified in the numerous schoolwide community service initiatives he’s done.”
In addition to Think Kindness, he led in the school’s Trick or Canned Fooding event at Halloween in which he and his peers dressed up in costumes and canvassed neighborhoods to collect donations for the Evelyn Mount Community Outreach food drive. Mostly, however, he reaches out to other students in the Washoe County School District.
“I’m always at every single school possible with another student from leadership,” Dylan said.
The senior recently was accepted to Embry-Riddle College in Prescott, Ariz. He will attend the school in the fall to study aerospace engineering, a path that took him months to decide.
“I always wanted to be an engineer or an architect,” Dylan said. “I looked into civil engineering, but didn’t want to do that. I looked into mechanical engineering and didn’t want to do that and besides, I’m horrible with chemistry.”
Dylan said a physics course he took introduced him to aerospace engineering. He and his classmates built model rockets and weather balloon satellites. The satellites were packages sent up into the atmosphere. One of his class’ cameras made it up to 112,000 feet in the air, surpassing Embry-Riddle’s record of 96,000 feet.
Dylan said he’ll look back on his time in high school as he broadened his horizons with all the activities with which he became involved.
“The main thing I got from high school is you get a broad sense of everything,” he said. “I look forward to college and getting more specific, advanced knowledge. I want to see if I’ll be able to do it.”
He said he’ll also keep fond memories of the personal relationships he developed. He’s enjoyed his time at TMCC, crediting it largely to the teachers who avail themselves to their students outside the classroom, he said.
“It gives you the idea that they’re not just teachers,” he said. “They’re people, too. That helped me pay more attention in class. It helped my education. My favorite thing was that I could connect with teachers; they were my friends.”
Mayes-Smith said Dylan has left his own signature on the school.
“I think Dylan is a once-in-a-lifetime student,” she said. “His impact on our school, his teachers and me will be felt for a long time.”
