As told by David Nelson
If it's something you're passionate about, go for it. You can do it. If I can do it, you can too.
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This program is the second time I've been to UVU. I started here in 2001 in computer science, and then I transferred to Arizona State to finish my degree. Then I worked in IT for a long time.
As I aged, I looked around and saw this antisocial behavior around me, and I decided I needed to be doing something better for the world. I felt like education was the rising tide that lifts all boats. If we can have a more educated populace, we can have a better society.
I decided to come back here just because I remember liking Utah. I remember being happy. So I figured, why not? I felt empowered to make this pivot in my career later in life because I planned on it; I saved up for a few years so that I could afford to change my life and go back to pursue something that would hopefully make me happier.
When I moved from Arizona to Utah, I had four sisters in the area. We left Arizona one by one, and every sister who came here ended up liking it and stayed. Now, they have little families here. Utah has become the root of most of my family. So, I moved to Utah and enrolled at UVU.
I chose science because, as a kid, I always had a passion for science. When I was in college the first time, I told myself I wasn't ambitious or smart enough to do it, which I realize is a narrative that isn't necessarily true. I got back into science and realized that I can do it. For a lot of my life, I felt like I was smart but didn't have the attention span and the willpower to sit down and power through homework that involved science. But I realized that when you're in the program, you are kind of forced to partner up with your fellow students to form study groups that enable you to do more than you think you can.
In chemistry, it's a little bit like learning a foreign language. First, you learn some words, and eventually, you learn full sentences. You don't get the opportunity to see how much you understand until you actually try. When you get the opportunity to do hands-on work in chemistry, you realize how far you need to grow. But you also realize that you are capable. Just being able to do it with your own hands feels great.
As part of my undergraduate studies, I get the opportunity to do undergraduate research. In my case, I partnered with a project that is monitoring Utah Lake soil samples and water samples for pesticides. It's important because Utah Lake is a fragile ecosystem. It's a shallow lake with not a lot of volume of water. It's got a lot of surface area. But, because of the nature of the drainage patterns in the surrounding farming communities, it accumulates a lot of pesticides. It's important to monitor what's going on in our lake.
Preserving areas in Utah is important to me because Utah is beautiful. There are a lot of habitats that are fragile, vulnerable, or endangered. It's important that we save as many wild places as possible for future generations to enjoy.
[UVU professor] Sally Rocks’s lab is an analytical lab. What I'm doing, specifically, is taking little samples of water, and we do a little bit of preparation with only water to isolate where we think the pesticides will be. We take that water and run it through a machine that uses UV light to tell us what kind of compounds are in there. By reading the data from that, we can suspect whether the contaminants of pesticides are in the water. From there, we have other machines that are a little bit more complex but more precise. The machines I use are HPLC, which is high-pressure liquid chromatography, and GCM, which is a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer. And through kind of some very brilliant physics, it can tell us kind of exactly what compounds are in that aerosolized sample.
Dr. Rocks has been an amazing mentor for me at UVU. She's got such a bright mind and a passion for learning. She's got industry experience that I think is invaluable. She'll take any opportunity she can to teach you about something cool that she's learned. She used to work in the mining industry, and she knows a lot about things that a lot of professors wouldn't know. You can see her face light up when she gets to impart some knowledge from her experience.
The resources that I found most helpful on campus were the math and science tutoring centers. They both have amazing peer support. Anybody who needs help in any math or science should check out the tutoring center. Also, the professors here seem amazingly willing to accommodate — even outside of their office hours — to help you learn, because they do have a passion for teaching.
Something that I've learned at UVU, being an older student, is that it's important to teach students the value of cross-cutting concepts and just critical thinking in general. It’s important that we understand how to critically look at information, evaluate truth claims, and analyze something on our own. Especially now, media literacy is so important. I do believe that higher education has helped me become a better critical thinker.
The biggest impact I want for students is to have the knowledge and develop the community to where they're good citizens, good neighbors, and they're kind to each other. I want students to have the critical thinking skills to know how to support democracy to have a thriving society that we need.
I have advice for two different types of students. The first is for high school students: My advice would be to explore a wide variety of classes to see what your interests really are. Don't be afraid to pursue something that maybe isn't as lucrative as you hoped it would be. But if it's something you're passionate about, go for it. For the returning student: you can do it. If I can do it, you can too. It's tough, but ultimately, it's been great. I've loved it. I feel like I've been part of the community, even though I'm 20 years older than most of these students. I feel like they've been so friendly and willing to form study groups and just be inclusive.
