Self-Paced Whiz Kid : 16-Year-Old Computer Engineer Is Preparing to Enter UCLA as a Junior

Like many 16-year-olds, Stephen Brown enjoys karate, roller-blading and computers.

*

Unlike his peers, though, the Thousand Oaks youth works as a computer engineer for Warner Bros. and assists an Agoura Hills computer firm with the conversion of its on-line system.

What’s more, the whiz kid is among the youngest of Moorpark College’s students to acquire enough credits to enter the University of California system. And he will start as a college junior.

Stephen, who bypassed high school altogether, insists that his parents never pushed him. They say they surrounded him with a supportive environment, allowed him to study whatever interested him in self-paced private classes, and did not panic when Stephen still would not read books at the age of 10.

“They will learn when they’re ready,” said Resa Brown, Stephen’s mother and the director of the G. T. Waters School in Moorpark, where Stephen spent his early years. “Children learn to walk and talk and all of these difficult things when they’re very young. Then suddenly they turn 5 and you have to sit and teach them? It doesn’t make sense.”

Their patience paid off. When Stephen decided to read, he plowed through Greek classics and then enrolled at Moorpark College--his first formal classroom setting--at the age of 12.

Now he is working as a computer engineer for Animated F/X, a division of Warner Bros., rubbing elbows with Steven Spielberg, lecturing entertainment and production executives at shows across the West, and preparing for a presentation this fall in Japan.

“At first I just tinkered, then it became a hobby, now computers are my job,” Stephen said. “No one ever told me I shouldn’t be writing programs just because I’m young.”

Stephen said his age usually isn’t an issue if he dresses the part of a computer executive. “I usually wear a coat and tie to work and no one gives me any trouble,” the gangly teen-ager said, sitting in his room surrounded by crates full of computer books. Stephen finally has a room of his own after years of sharing with his younger brother. “Right now I’m in shorts and a T-shirt. Not too mature.”

Steve Sanchez, who recently hired Stephen to work for his Agoura Hills computer firm, InterNexus, said Stephen’s knowledge of computers made up for his age.

“I was impressed by how he carried himself and his willingness to perform his tasks,” Sanchez said. “He has a personal demeanor well beyond his years.”

Until he entered Moorpark College at the age of 12, Stephen had never been in a traditional classroom, earned a traditional grade, or set foot in the public school system. Instead, he took self-taught classes at the G. T. Waters School, a small, private school run in the warehouse of the Moorpark firm. The curriculum there allowed him to study whatever interested him.

“By the time he was 12, everything was too boring for him,” Stephen’s mother said. “Whatever we provided, it wasn’t enough.”

That’s when Brown enrolled Stephen in a computer class for gifted children at Moorpark College. A few months into the class, Stephen’s teacher, Leon Rouge, came to the G. T. Waters School and told Brown that her son belonged in the school’s regular classes. Stephen took an introductory class until he grew bored with that too.

“I hung around the computer lab and proceeded to take things apart and put them together,” Stephen said.

By the following semester, Stephen was assisting Rouge in his computer class at the school while continuing to take classes in English and the humanities to fulfill requirements for the UC system. He does not have a high school degree, but has earned enough college credits to qualify for the university.

“If you don’t give a challenge to a really brilliant youngster, they’ll fall by the wayside and get into trouble,” Rouge said.

Brown insists that a house filled with learning tools and absent pressure to perform led to her children’s success. Stephen’s brother and sister, Erin, 14, and Matthew, 11, are already taking some regular classes at Moorpark College.

“My contribution to this learning process is that it doesn’t work if TV is involved,” said Stephen’s father Dennis, a sales and marketing consultant. The family has a television set but only uses it for videos.

Meanwhile, Stephen, who hopes eventually to obtain his doctorate in genetic engineering, is preparing to attend UCLA in the fall when he is not working, playing classical pieces on the family piano, or roller-skating with friends.

He said he’ll probably commute to school. “Why should I give up my own room?”