Kirk Preston describes himself as a persistent person who takes advantage of opportunities “wherever I can, wherever they arise.”

But it’s not as if he leaves things to chance. Preston’s foresight and planning have resulted in an opportunity to study the Japanese language and culture at Okayama University in Japan this summer, courtesy of the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Program.

He was among 500 American students from 245 institutions chosen from more than 5,000 applicants to participate in the program, which aims to promote language and cultural fluency in areas critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

Preston came to Rose from Crowley, a Fort Worth suburb, though his family has since relocated to Carmel, Indiana; his mother is an elementary school principal and his father is a special education teacher, both in the Indianapolis Public Schools.

The younger Preston has been interested in Japanese language and culture since making a Japanese friend in high school. Her family invited him to cultural events and on visits to the Fort Worth Japanese Garden; taught him hiragana, a form of Japanese writing, and kanji calligraphy; and fed him Japanese food. The friend’s mother also started teaching him the language.

“I like the culture, the cuisine, the customs they have,” he said. When he learned about the language program, “I was like, OK, cool deal. I get to learn the language and then there’s the potential opportunity to study abroad with the state department. I’m going to go ahead and take it.”

It took some planning, though. The state department requires applicants who wish to study Japanese to have at least two academic years of study in the language. Though he was double majoring in mechanical engineering and international studies, Preston chose to add a minor in Japanese.

It paid off. He will depart the United States soon after giving the welcome address at Rose’s May 27 Commencement and be in Japan June 12 through Aug. 9. Soon thereafter, he will go to the University of Twente in the Netherlands to complete his college education in a global exchange program.

Preston is “inquisitive and curious about the topics discussed in class and how they relate to practical applications in the real world,” said Amir H. Danesh-Yazdi, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. He is “studious and hard-working” and has “well thought-out professional goals.”

Preston expects to graduate in December or February; his Rose education has taken longer than the typical four years because he switched his second major and a co-op stretched an extra quarter. He said he was “very appreciative of the flexibility the faculty and staff at Rose have afforded me. It allowed me to take my education into my own hands.”

He has had a variety of experiences in and out of the classroom during his years at Rose, including playing cornerback for the football team for three years; working as the pre-collegiate initiative chair for Rose’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers; and serving as president of the Rose Innovative Student Entrepreneurs organization.

In summer 2019, he was an information security intern for the Tarrant County government in Fort Worth. In spring 2020, he had a logistics and storage engineering co-op at Marathon Petroleum Corp. in Findlay, Ohio. A month later, he started as an intern in product testing at AT&T in Dallas. In summer 2021, he interned in natural gas distribution for Duke Energy Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. Immediately after he finished that, he took on a co-op as a hardware functional safety engineer at Amazon Robotics near Boston. And in summer 2022, he was a cybersecurity intern at Deloitte in Seattle.

“I looked at these internships as ways to travel to different cities, because I like to travel,” he said. “But rather than finding something that I like to do, it really helps me figure out what I don't want to do … It’s hard for me to figure out what I like to do just because I have so many varied interests.”

His first and last internships, however, tapped an interest cybersecurity, and Deloitte already has offered him a job starting next March. He’ll consult on cybersecurity in emerging technology, including the Internet of things – physical objects that deal with data. 

Down the line, “I'm hoping that these international experiences will set the foundations to have an international career,” Preston said. “I would definitely like to work in Japan, at least for a year or two. But I’m also open to working in places like Singapore or potentially in Europe.”

There, he said, but also “where I want to be – on the cutting edge.”