February 05, 2025
Ian Hoffman didn’t learn about Trine University in the most comfortable of settings: He first heard of the university during an orthodontist visit in Angola.
However, he’s been able to make a lot of fun memories at Trine since then, especially covering the men’s basketball national championship with the Trine Broadcasting Network last year.
“It was a ton of fun to cover the team and obviously watching them win a National Championship an hour down the road in Fort Wayne was awesome,” the communications major said. “Working at TBN has been a great experience. I have had the privilege of meeting and working with some great people.”
“It has always been a dream of mine to commentate sports. While I knew from about 14 that I wouldn't want to do it as a full-time job, as that would require me to move to a major city, Trine allows me to do it on a smaller scale, and it is super enjoyable.”
A human, not a number
While his first knowledge of Trine may have been associated with orthodontics, Ian
had a lot more fun attending the university’s Men's Basketball Camp the summer after
his freshman year of high school.
“My coach was Langston Johnston, who was a COM major, and he made it extremely enjoyable,” he recalled. “It was also my first of what would become many interactions with Brooks Miller. It was a ton of fun and is probably one of my favorite sporting memories. I met a lot of people I still keep in contact with, and now I get to sit courtside in the exact same gym I got to play in.”
When he visited Trine to consider attending, Ian said he was “treated as a human” as opposed to a number.
“I liked that a lot more than some of the schools I had visited,” he said. “I met with Andy Brown during my visit. I had no idea at the time how much I would work with him over my three years on campus. It was a unique experience, and the personal touch really sold me on Trine.”
Trine’s proximity to his hometown of Montpelier, Ohio, allowed Ian to save money by commuting while still being able to participate in campus activities, including a Thursday morning basketball group of students, staff and community members.
He’s also been able connect with faculty like Carter Snider, who Ian said has had a major impact on his career.
“We had very similar upbringings and he has always been willing to meet with me outside of class to talk about anything and everything,” Ian said. “He also would bring in guest speakers who were often former students who were very successful, and I feel like I was able to learn a lot from them.”
Ian is looking forward to working at Wieland Chase, where he has served as a sales and marketing intern for two years, after he graduates in May. He connected with the company at one of Trine’s career fairs with the help of a Trine alumnus who now is a mechanical engineer at the company.
“My company hires a lot of engineers from Trine, but I am the first non-engineer there, and it has been a great experience,” he said.
Matthew Jimenez is a senior design engineering technology major at Trine University. Throughout his time as a student, Jimenez has had three internships and recently accepted a job offer at Rolls-Royce, where he will serve as a Graduate Manufacturing Engineering Intern.
Having grown up in a blue-collar environment, Christian Preijers wanted to learn firsthand what it was like to work in more high-tech surroundings.
Chase Stickley, a senior golf management major at Trine University who is also completing his MBA, has spent the last several months applying his degree skills to his internship experience with MedPro Group.