It’s not a stretch to say that an internship with the city of Elgin changed the course of Chris Nawrot’s career.
Nawrot was a student at Elgin Community College five years ago, working toward an associate degree in engineering science, when his adviser sent out an email blast about a GIS internship with the city.
Nawrot was interested, but had a question.
“I was like, ‘what’s GIS?’,” Nawrot said. After some research into geographic information systems, he decided it looked “pretty interesting” and applied.
Four years of interning later, Nawrot is nearly finished with college courses at Northern Illinois University and has been employed as a full-time GIS specialist with the city for more than a year.
“I was able to use the skills I had already learned in engineering and apply it to something else that I didn’t even know…
