Meet the Class of 2016

The Class of 2016
Rockhurst University’s newest class of graduates includes students from across the country and the globe now poised to bring a wealth of different life experiences, skills and interests into the world following Rockhurst’s May 14 commencement. Here are a few of their stories.

Rebeca Arias

Growing up in a bilingual household in San Diego, California, amidst Navy shipyards and helping in high school with a friend of her father’s at a research institute in Mexico are just a few of the experiences that have shaped Rebeca Arias.

Now graduating with a biochemistry degree at Rockhurst and preparing for medical school at Saint Louis University on a Navy scholarship, Arias said her experience at Rockhurst also helped shape her chosen path to enter pediatrics after her military service.

Arias said she started college at age 16 — which, in a city halfway across the country, might seem intimidating — but she said she found a welcome home at RU.

“You can make friends really easily here,” she said. “There’s a sense of community and everyone is concerned about each other.”

Arias balanced her coursework as a member of Phi Delta Epsilon pre-medical fraternity, the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity, the Student Organization of Latinos, as a student instructional leader in chemistry and Spanish tutor and as a volunteer at St. Luke’s Hospice House.

Quang Nguyen

At age 15 Quang Nguyen traveled, alone, from Vietnam to the United States, with the hopes of his parents for a promising future.

Now almost a decade later, he is preparing to graduate with undergraduate degrees in accounting, finance and mathematics. At Rockhurst, he’s been an exemplary student, a member of the economics club, a tutor in the learning center, and in April received the Dean’s Highest Honor award from the Helzberg School of Management.

Heading to graduate school in the fall and hoping to teach and to help people achieve financial stability, Nguyen said his accomplishments are shared with those who helped along the way — his family, the faculty who taught him at Rockhurst, and the campus and Kansas City communities.

“It’s never one person’s story, it’s the story of us all, and I just happen to be the guy who’s writing it,” he said.

Davies Sitenta

Leaving for college was one of the hardest decisions that Davies Sitenta has had to make.

Growing up surrounded by family in Zambia, Sitenta was given a chance by his mother’s employer to attend college in the United States in the hopes of making his dreams of becoming an international economist and diplomat a reality. Shortly before he was scheduled to leave, his mother passed away from Kaposi sarcoma cancer, giving him the responsibility to take care of his siblings, making the choice to leave for the U.S. even harder.

After studying for two years at a community college in Kansas City, Kansas, Sitenta was drawn by the Jesuit core values to transfer to Rockhurst University for the remainder of his studies. Along the way he said he has had to rely on the generosity of members of the Kansas City community for housing and other needs, while University staff and other donors helped raise $15,000 that allowed him to finish his degree.

After graduation, Sitenta said he would like to find a job in the United States that allows him to continue to support his family. But he said he also wants to make sure that whatever his path that he can help people, a way to pay back the investment that so many others made in him.

“That all goes back to my life experiences,” he said. “I want to do something that will make an impact in people’s lives.”

Kaitlin Doyle

Even early on, there was little doubt where Kaitlin Doyle’s career path would end up. Surrounded by family members who worked in therapy-related fields, she said she remembers following her mother, an occupational therapy assistant, at nearly every career shadow day.

And the reasons that Doyle was drawn to occupational therapy are the same reasons she was drawn to Rockhurst, she said.

“I enrolled in OT because I wanted to help people, and I chose Rockhurst because the school values that goal,” she said. “The program has not only given me the knowledge and skills to be successful but more importantly the confidence, empowerment, and experience.”

She’s had experiences like acting as program administrator for the OT program’s pro-bono clinic and worked with special-needs children in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Now ready to begin work at an area center for children with special needs, Doyle will also complete her Master of Business Administration degree from Rockhurst, scheduled to graduate in May 2017.

Aldair Gongora

For Aldair Gongora, engineering is about much more than securing a job.

A native of Belize, he said since high school he has focused on ways that math and physics could be used to make God’s good world better.

Gongora brought the desire to serve to the U.S., becoming one of the first students in Rockhurst’s engineering program with the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As part of the Engineers without Borders student group, he helped with a project to provide running water to people in rural Panama.  He said his work now and in the future is inspired by the Jesuit values and liberal arts approach he’s learned through his education and the people he has met along the way.

“Anything you do, do it with love and do it the best you can,” he said. “It’s the only way we can move forward.”

Gongora will continue to move forward after graduation — after a summer internship at a power plant and teaching assistant position in Barbados, he will head to Boston University to start a five-year doctoral program studying fuels and sustainable energy.

Derek Hoover

Derek Hoover always loved history. But he didn’t know where that would take him.

Now preparing to graduate with degrees in history and theology, Hoover has one answer — first to Romania, then to Netherlands, as a start.

In July, Hoover will participate in an archaeological dig in rural Romania to kick off his life after his undergraduate degree. After helping  excavate a Roman villa, he will begin a master’s program at Nijmegen Radboud University in the Netherlands, studying the history of the Church and theology.

It’s a dramatic shift from where Hoover started — he first declared a physical therapy major before switching to business. But through Rockhurst’s history courses and faculty, he said he decided to pursue the subject he was most passionate about, adding theology as a complement. The experience taught him a valuable lesson, he said.

“Not everything moves in a straight line, even history teaches us that,” he said. “My time at Rockhurst has not been a straight line, but I’m grateful for it.”

Jeremy Adkins

After five years of Army service, Jeremy Adkins was looking to start the next phase of his life, but was unhappy in community college. His grandmother, who grew up near campus and met Jeremy’s grandfather when he attended Rockhurst, gave him some not-so-subtle suggestions.

“She kept handing me flyers for Rockhurst,” he said.

Following his grandfather’s footsteps — he was a World War II veteran and student at Rockhurst when he met Jeremy's grandmother — Adkins enrolled at Rockhurst using his G.I. Bill benefits. Despite often being older than other students,  Adkins said he found in Rockhurst a place that challenged him academically and offered opportunities to grow — as a tutor in the learning center, a member of Phi Delta Theta history honor society, and on a service trip to Guatemala.

“Rockhurst is a place that made me a different person,” he said. “It made me discover things about myself and heal in ways that I didn’t know I needed to be healed.”

 With his degrees in secondary education and history, Adkins said he hopes to teach high school history and share his newfound perspective and passion for social justice with a younger generation.

Claire Minnick

A campus leader almost from the first time she stepped on campus as a Rockhurst University student, Claire Minnick said she has a lot of impactful memories and experiences to choose from. But one of the most profound experiences happened half a world away.

Volunteering in a Ugandan medical clinic as part of a Research College of Nursing-sponsored trip, Minnick said she found herself  in the delivery room with new mothers, even asked for input on their newborns’ names.

Since her freshman year, Minnick has served in a number of leadership roles on campus — the freshman orientation team, campus ambassadors, Voices for Justice and a campus retreat leader, to name a few. It was the type of experience she envisioned when she first visited Rockhurst as a high school student.

“The Jesuit mission was a huge part of what brought me to Rockhurst. I wanted to be challenged and expand my worldview,” she said.

Graduating with bachelor’s degrees in nursing and Spanish, Minnick will start in Menorah Medical Center’s labor and delivery unit. She said she hopes to become a midwife and serve mothers and babies in Spanish-speaking communities.

Simon Clark

Even after he decided that he wanted to come to Rockhurst, Simon Clark said he was not sure that he would finish his education here.

That’s because when he started, the University did not yet have a engineering program, so he planned to complete his general coursework here and transfer to finish his education. When the University announced it would partner with the University of Missouri-Kansas City to offer an engineering degree, Clark said he found a fit.

“Rockhurst taught a lot of the math and physics classes in a way that made me a well-rounded person,” he said.

Clark, who completed his degree requirements in December and currently works at Trinity Biotech improving blood analyzing equipment in Kansas City, will be Rockhurst’s first graduate of the engineering partnership with UMKC. During his time in class and as he begins his career, he said he has tried to be a sort of ambassador for the program, helping establish resources for engineering students on campus and spreading the word about what makes the program different and what it did for him.

“I think that Rockhurst focuses on leaders,” he said. “And they certainly made a leader out of me.”