{"id":32863,"date":"2019-07-18T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/?p=32863"},"modified":"2019-10-24T09:54:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T13:54:50","slug":"chesnutt-gift-lends-a-welcome-hand-to-the-well-rounded-b-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/2019\/07\/chesnutt-gift-lends-a-welcome-hand-to-the-well-rounded-b-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Chesnutt gift lends a welcome hand to the well-rounded \u201cB\u201d student."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Van
Van Chesnutt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

R. Van Chesnutt believes in giving back, and has chosen the Florida International University Foundation Inc., for a generous six-figure bequest. But the successful FIU Business<\/a> alumnus has created a scholarship with a twist: it\u2019s focused not on those top grade point earners, but on first-generation, \u201cB\u201d average business students.<\/p>\n

The Chesnutt Scholarship, funded through a bequest in the donor\u2019s will to the FIU Foundation, will provide support for undergraduate business students who have a GPA between 2.45 and 3.8, and are among the first generation in their families to attend college. It is designed to \u201cassist and encourage retention of \u2018B\u2019 students; those who would not be perceived by the donor as \u2018too serious\u2019 or as \u2018afraid to question authority\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly the kind of student Van Chesnutt says he was.<\/p>\n

Chesnutt, who graduated with a BBA in 1978, attended FIU at night while working during the day as a production planner at American Hospital Supply Corp.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a lot longer to get your degree that way,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t an \u201cA\u201d student because I was working full time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Van
Van Chesnutt at the Temple of Hatshepsutin in Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not long after graduating, Chesnutt answered an ad in the Miami Herald<\/em> for The Boeing Company. They were seeking estimators. He got the job and ended up moving to Seattle. He spent 20 years with Boeing before leaving and founding his own company, Means to An End, an information technology systems consulting firm. While at Boeing, he also founded Tirraappendi Inc., the licensor of security technology he invented and patented.<\/p>\n

\"Push
\u201cPush the Red Button\u201d book cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chesnutt was born and raised in Miami, and several family members worked in aviation. He found it serendipitous that he should end up at Boeing, an aviation and aerospace company. As is often the case with careers, things do not turn out as we might desire; Chesnutt dreamed of being an architect, but decided that pursuing a business degree was the more practical path.<\/p>\n

At the time Chesnutt was attending FIU, all business students were required to learn a computer language (that meant Cobal, Fortran or Basic. Chesnutt chose Basic).<\/p>\n

Chesnutt said that \u201cIt turned out that the computing experience I received at FIU helped me a great deal when I started working for Boeing.\u201d Boeing, he said, \u201cinadvertently discovered I knew something about computers, and that set me off on a completely different path, one that I had never conceived of or envisioned. I became a database and application architect.\u201d<\/p>\n

FIU classes gave Chesnutt another boost at Boeing. It happened that in-class business problems used real-life Boeing examples and processes, including estimation problems and studying the aviation firm\u2019s organizational structure.<\/p>\n

After leaving Boeing, Chesnutt, working as a consultant, helped to set up a complex medical database used in analyzing regional cancer diagnoses and outcomes for a \u00a0Seattle cancer research center. As a consultant, he worked for a number of companies both public and private, including returning to Boeing as a contractor.<\/p>\n

\"Brian
\u201cBrian and the Storm\u201d book cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Outside of work, Chesnutt and his wife have been avid travelers for more than 30 years. Because he kept journals over the years, Chesnutt has written a humorous memoir about their travel adventures titled \u201cPush the Red Button.\u201d He has also written a children\u2019s book, \u201cBrian and the Storm: A Young Boy’s First Hurricane,\u201d which harkens back to when he lived in South Florida.<\/p>\n

Chesnutt said that he had been mulling over creating an FIU scholarship for years before finally making the commitment in June 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever I have done \u2013 including attending FIU \u2013 has lead me to the next thing, or enabled me to do it,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I learned at FIU helped me transition to do what I did at Boeing, and what I did at Boeing helped move me into my consulting activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chesnutt says he\u2019d like to make that progression available to others. It\u2019s a path that has led him to an interesting, rewarding life, and he welcomes the opportunity to foster both the lessons and the opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is what they teach you in school,\u201d he said in closing, \u201cand then there is real life. These can be very different things, but the former often enables the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R. Van Chesnutt believes in giving back, and has chosen the Florida International University Foundation Inc., for a generous six-figure bequest. But the successful FIU Business alumnus has created a scholarship with a twist: it\u2019s focused not on those top grade point earners, but on first-generation, \u201cB\u201d average business students. The Chesnutt Scholarship, funded through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":32901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3903,4547],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32863"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32903,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32863\/revisions\/32903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biznews.fiu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}