New York, NY (September 15, 2006)-- The National Urban Technology Center (Urban Tech) welcomed intern Jose Agramonte as a member of its staff during the summer of 2006.  Agramonte, a Dominican Republic native, lives in Washington Heights, Manhattan, and graduated this summer from the Manhattan Center for Math and Science.  Agramonte came to Urban Tech through the Children’s Aid Society’s Mill Bank location in Manhattan, where the Children’s Aid Society runs a month-long after school program that trains high school students to look for jobs, gain interview experience, workplace success strategies, such as conflict resolution, teamwork, and leadership.  During his tenure at Urban Tech, he received a stipend from the Children’s Aid Society.  He was compensated for 13 hours’ worth of work per week, but Urban Tech staff would not have known it:  Agramonte easily spent twice as much time in the office.  “I was doing it for myself,” he says.  “It was for my benefit.”

As Agramonte’s devotion to his work suggests, his partnership with Urban Tech this summer was indeed successful.  Agramonte is interested in animation; he plans to take college classes during the fall before transferring to a SUNY school to study graphic design.  Prior to his experience at Urban Tech, he had taken a multi-media class and an art class in high school, but much of his work with animation he had done on his own.  “I think I was born with an interest in animation,” he says.  This summer, he got to work alongside a professional animator, Urban Tech’s Senior Production Manager Craig Patches, who taught him how to use Flash animation.  “I thought I’d just be doing envelopes, but I got to work with Flash.  I was being trained for something I wanted to do.  I learned things that some people in college don’t know.  It was priceless,” he says. 

His other responsibilities included office work, updating Curriculum Guides for previous modules, choosing new songs to add to Perpetrating Rhymes, a music game in Urban Tech’s Youth Leadership Academy (YLA) modules.  While working with the YLA modules, Agramonte observes, “The modules are really fun, an educational way to learn about life.  Using animation is an easy and cool way to capture people’s attention.”  He also learned to use Photoshop and Cool Edit, a program that allows participants to create rhythms, record their voices, and write songs.  “Every time I did something, I got better at it.  I don’t remember one day when I didn’t learn something new.”  Of his experience in an office, he adds, “Everyone is friendly.  What I love about this office is that you’re independent; you make your own choices.” 

In addition to the work he did for Urban Tech, he applied the lessons he learned from Craig Patches to his own animation.  “I have created an animation.  There are action and movie type animations, so I made my first animation look like an action figure or monster.  And then I made him move in time with a beat.”  To reward him for his hard work this summer, and to encourage his interest in animation, Urban Tech has awarded Agramonte a computer.