Chininin Buele, who is a gifted classical pianist will graduate in April 2005 with a Computer Science degree, was also named Student Employee the Year by the Midwest Association of Student Employment Administrators for the State of Missouri. This is the third consecutive year that a Northwest student employee has received the prestigious state award.

Employed as a Computer Lab Consultant by Client Computing, Chininin Buele provides in-person support to students, faculty and staff while assisting lab users with software issues and troubleshooting basic hardware and software problems in the Information Systems-Client Computing public "general-purpose" computing labs in Owens Library.

Born in Loja, Ecuador, Chininin Buele came to the United States after studying piano performance at the Bustamante Celi Conservatory of Music and winning a number of academic and musical honors. Arriving in Maryville in 2001, Chininin Buele lived with former Maryville High School music teachers Bill and Heidi Dodd who now reside in Kearney, Missouri, and graduated in the top-ten of his class at Maryville High School. Chininin Buele enrolled at Northwest in fall 2002 and has received numerous honors including second place in the ACM Mid-Central Collegiate Programming Contest sponsored by IBM and the Association of Computing Machinery, and a 2005 Tower Service Award.

Dr. Gary McDonald, professor of computer science and information systems, said Chininin Buele has always displayed a “great desire to succeed and excel” both personally and professionally.

Dr. Ernest Kramer, a professor in the Music Department, praised Chininin Buele as an exceptional pianist and someone he and the Music Department Computing Lab patrons valued and appreciated: “Victor has been an outstanding help to the Music Department. He is not only an outstanding student and pianist, he is also an excellent computer lab monitor… He helped the Music Department to run more smoothly.”

According to his Client Computing supervisors, Kim Todd and Tabatha Verbick, “'Together we can make a difference' is the CC Computer Lab Consultant motto, and Victor lives up to this axiom each and every day."