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Oral history interview with Alejandro Vilches

 Collection
Identifier: SR 12280

Scope and Contents

This an oral history interview with Alejandro Vilches was conducted by Sankar Raman on February 3, 2018. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. In this interview, Vilches discusses his family background and early life in Bryan, Texas, including his father’s education there. He then discusses his life in Honduras from ages 4 to 28, including being bilingual, his education, and his siblings. He also talks about his father’s career as a pilot and death in an airplane accident, as well as his mother raising their family as a single parent. He describes the Honduran people and culture. He discusses studying computer science at the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and the pressure he felt to succeed as the oldest child. He also talks about holding dual citizenship and his cultural and ethnic identity. He talks about coming to the United States to study computer science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, including the differences in American and Honduran cultural norms, the diverse student body, and his social life. He discusses interning for Intel during the summers while at Purdue, and then beginning work as a software engineer for the company in Hillsboro, Oregon, shortly after he graduated. He also talks about his robotics-related volunteer work. He closes the interview by discussing how his views have changed regarding immigration and the value of diversity.

Dates

  • 2018 February 3

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/

Biographical note

Alejandro Vilches was born in 1980 in Bryan, Texas, and grew up in Honduras. He attended the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and earned a degree in computer science in 2007. He returned to the United States in 2008 to attend Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He earned a master’s degree in computer science in 2011, and soon after he began working as a software engineer at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Extent

132 Megabytes (1 online resource (1 audio file (2 hr., 23 min., 9 sec.))) : MPEG-4

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Oral history interview with Alejandro Vilches conducted by Sankar Raman on February 3, 2018, for The Immigrant Story. Vilches was born in Texas and grew up in Honduras. After earning computer science degrees from the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in 2007 and from Purdue University in Indiana in 2011, he became a software engineer at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of The Immigrant Story, July 2020 (Lib. Acc. RL2020-018).

Publication note

An article about Alejandro Vilches, "It is the Only Way to Succeed" by Sankar Raman, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at https://theimmigrantstory.org/succeed/.

Creator

Title
Guide to oral history interview with Alejandro Vilches
Status
Completed
Author
Sarah Stroman
Date
2020
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
Finding aid is written in English.

Repository Details

Part of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library Repository

Contact:
1200 SW Park Ave.
Portland OR 97205 United States
5033065204
5033065240