Oak Brook's Nashita Syeda to give undergraduate student address at Illinois Institute of Technology commencement

Nashita Syeda will be the undergraduate student speaker at Illinois Institute of Technology's 153rd Commencement Exercise on May 14. The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. at Illinois Tech's Ed Glancy Field, located at 2967 S. Michigan Ave. in Chicago.

Syeda is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Science in Psychological Science, and aspires to a future career in child psychology and therapy. Her capstone project was in child developmental psychology, and she wants to pursue her research through graduate school.

Syeda is from Oak Brook, Illinois, and a graduate of Islamic Foundation School in Villa Park, Illinois. She was on the dean's list nearly every year of her college career. Syeda's student team won the Sports and Technology Track in the spring 2022 Interprofessional Projects (IPRO) Program Innovation Day for a project with a national sporting goods retailer to help elevate its custom golf club fitting experience for customers. Her team also won the Community Lab portion of the fall 2021 IPRO Innovation Day after successfully presenting a marketing plan to the owners of a Bronzeville neighborhood ice cream shop in Chicago.

Syeda has volunteered or worked at several child-focused therapy facilities since 2018. Currently, she works at BY YOUR SIDE - Autism Therapy Services as a behavior technician, where she uses applied behavior analysis to help children on the autistic spectrum reach social, academic, and developmental goals.

She is also a volunteer reader at John B. Drake Elementary School in Chicago.