University of Rochester

Features: Center of Success

Uncertain during his freshman year about whether to keep biology as a major, Sean Rodrigues ’12 talked over his interests with Nick Valentino, the Kearns Center’s assistant director for college programs, and wound up switching to chemical engineering as a sophomore. That year, when Rodriques debated whether to return home to Massa-chusetts to help raise his younger sister, Valentino stayed by his side, encouraging him to stick with his studies and support his family in other ways.

“I was always a motivated student, but Nick helped push me along the way when I’d have a rough week,” says Rodrigues, who’s working toward his master’s degree and PhD in electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “He was always behind me, even when I didn’t think I had the confidence, saying, ‘Give it a shot. Just try.’ He kept me accountable.”

Through the Kearns Center, Rodrigues became a Kearns Scholar as a freshman, a McNair Scholar as a sophomore, and a Xerox Engineering Research Fellow as a junior. Financial support that accompanied those designations—allowing him to cover housing and meal costs without acquiring extra sources of debt—aided his ability to accept summer opportunities, which included conducting research on membranes that have applications for fuel cells.

“I probably wouldn’t have gotten my foot in the door with that first chemical research position without the Kearns Center, and I just kept getting into more programs from there,” he says. “It was an incredible resource.”

Now working on nonlinear optics and plasmonics, Rodrigues, recently awarded a three-year stipend from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, hopes someday to become a professor at a research institute.

“Nick still contacts me to see how I’m doing,” he says. “He keeps me actively engaged in the community.”