World travels for Laser Electro-Optics alumni

At 17, Jeff Denney never imagined the direction his life was about to take. A Riesel High School student at the time, Denney joined two of his buddies at Texas State Technical College in the Laser Electro-Optics Technology (LET). He and his friends learned about the program after a TSTC recruiting venture to Riesel put on a demo for soon-to-graduate seniors. With his friends enrolling in the same program, Denney didn't really know what he was getting into, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Little did he know.

Fast forward some 18 years later: Denney is now a world traveler and a leader in his field. He knows lasers inside and out. He serves as president of the LET Advisory Committee and lends his technical expertise to engineers on his day-to-day job with Cymer Inc., a global company that provides sales and support of excimer lasers (a form of ultraviolet laser) in today's high-tech semiconductor marketplace.

"It's an interesting job, that's for sure," said Denney. "I never knew TSTC would take me in this direction in my life."

Indeed. Employed since two months before he even graduated in 1995, Denney has traveled to the likes of Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Japan, France, Scotland and more. He's been to 11 states in the U.S., has lived on both the West and the East coasts and makes frequent trips between California — the parental location of Cymer — and his home in Waco. In his first two jobs before Cymer, he serviced half a dozen different lasers and conducted field service along the East Coast. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree at Concordia University, fully funded by Cymer, and moved out of the field and into second-level support for field service engineers.

While he aspires to move someday into management, he's really quite content with his life. Now settled down with a wife and a son, Denney has come a long way from the naive 19-year-old he described graduating from TSTC.

"I could never have envisioned where I've gotten to, where I've gotten to travel, who I've gotten to meet. It's been such a huge world experience I've been able to gather because of the education and where it could take me," Denney said.

When he talks to current students, his main message is really quite simple: "This program [LET] can give you the skills to gain a good job and really good pay — as long as you stick with it and do your best."

And that's coming from a guy who knows.