Attracted by a strong curriculum, opportunities for experiential learning and bright job prospects, more students enrolled in the College of Engineering during the 2012-2013 school year than in the prior year. Overall enrollment was up 5%.
Students represented a wide spectrum of society. They hailed from 9 countries and 19 U.S. states and about 12% came from historically underrepresented ethnic backgrounds. Just under 60% came from Rhode Island.Women comprised 16% of the all students, on par with national averages.
Our students stood out from the pack. In our undergraduate class, 421 students earned prestigious University or Centennial scholarships. Undergraduate chemical engineering student Eily Cournoyer won a Fulbright and computer engineering graduate student Yuhong Liu took the Graduate School’s Excellence in Doctoral Research Award.
Living the Dream
In a poultry plant during third shift in 2005, a smug supervisor told Charles Rushimisha he would be aligning chicken on a conveyor belt earning minimum wage for the rest of his life. Moving up in America, the manager said, required a college degree that Rushimisha would never obtain. After all, the young man just emigrated from Rwanda, barely spoke English, lacked money and had no family support.
Rushimisha took it as a challenge. Now, he is a few courses shy of earning a chemical engineering degree. He’ll become the first in his family to earn a degree and will likely graduate among the top of his class.
“Anybody can do it,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where you’re from or your story.”
Rushimisha grew up in Congo and Rwanda shifting among family members after his parents died in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that cost more than 500,000 lives. Despite the horrible environment, Rushimisha excelled in math and physics during high school and friends encouraged him to become a teacher.
While mulling his career options, he stopped in a library to read an English language magazine in a bid to learn the language. He overheard a young man telling his parents about applying for a visa to attend college in America.
He headed to the U.S. consulate. A staffer took a liking to him, approved his visa and encouraged him to settle in Maine with its relatively small and friendly community.
Rushimisha landed at Dulles International Airport on Nov. 7, 2005 with little more than the clothes on his back. He lived in a Portland shelter for a few weeks before meeting other immigrants and finding a job at Barber Foods.
At Barber Foods, he saw supervisors making twice his wage for work with less physical labor.
The manager’s comments about college inspired him to enroll in classes at the University of Southern Maine. Encouraged by a professor, Rushimisha started looking for colleges that offered chemical engineering, a major not offered at his school.
He found URI online and was attracted by its modest enrollment and the region’s weather.
“It’s a small enough community to get noticed but it’s big enough for you to acquire the skills you need,” he says.
Making the transition was initially difficult. During his first semester at URI he couldn’t afford textbooks and borrowed them from classmates. He eventually connected with the Talent Development Program, the College of Engineering’s Minority Outreach Office and others who matched him with financial aid and on-campus jobs. He now owns textbooks, lives in an apartment and enjoys the occasional night out.
“What I got from people here is a gift I am going to cherish forever,” he says.
That gift Rushimisha hopes to leverage into acceptance at graduate school and a career as a petroleum engineer. Ultimately, he wants to spend a decade or so in the U.S. and then return to central Africa to start his own business tapping oil fields, which hold economic promise for a region still recovering from war.
“I would die for America but I don’t think America needs me as much as Congo and Rwanda,” Rushimisha says. “Those countries, that’s where there is need.”
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