{"id":3564,"date":"2019-07-30T11:41:36","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T15:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/imprint\/?p=3564"},"modified":"2019-07-30T11:41:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T15:41:42","slug":"kelsey-rodriguez-a-shining-example-of-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/imprint\/kelsey-rodriguez-a-shining-example-of-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelsey Rodriguez: A Shining Example of Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Pamela Gores<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At UCF with an enrollment\nof 70,000 students comes 70,000 stories, each one complex in its own right. In\nsearching for one of these unique stories, I met with Kelsey Rodriguez, who not\nonly was eager to share her success through IMPRINT but was willing to reveal\nhow she became one of UCF\u2019s finest. Her story turned out to be quite simple:\nshe graduated with a class of 16 in Puerto Rico and decided to come to UCF to\n\u201csave the world\u201d with not a single credit to her name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a Wednesday afternoon,\none of the rare sunny ones this summer, in the Starbucks located on Memory\nMall, I sat down with Kelsey so that she could tell me her story.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked why she chose\nenvironmental engineering as a major, she answers in the midst of a short\nlaugh. \u201cI picked [environmental] engineering because I like math. I didn\u2019t\nreally know much about the topic and then I was literally Googling one day and\nstarted typing \u2018different types of engineering\u2019 and I came across environmental\nand I was like, \u201cOh! I like the planet, I like nature.\u201d I just like the idea of\ndoing as much as you can for the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Kelsey\u2019s nonlinear\npath which further caught IMPRINT\u2019s attention. Having never taken chemistry,\nphysics, or upper-division math courses in high school, Kelsey came to UCF\nduring the fall 2015 semester as a \u201cblank slate\u201d for her major. However, in the\npast year alone she\u2019s received the Undergraduate Student Award in Environmental\nChemistry from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and a grant from the 15th\nannual P3 Award held by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Undergraduate Student Award in Environmental Chemistry was given to Kelsey after an extensive nomination and selection process, all of which was initiated by Dr. Woo Hyoung Lee of the Civil Environmental and Construction Department at UCF. In order to be eligible, a student must have completed one full year of study at their current institution by May of the respective year. Only one award per department at an educational institution is given to an outstanding full-time undergraduate student. The award consists of a certificate (pictured below) and a one year membership in the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry. Since 2007 only two UCF students have received this award, Kelsey included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the P3 Award is from a national student design competition that focuses on the 3 P\u2019s: People, Planet, and Prosperity. After passing through the initial research phase (Phase l), Kelsey, Dr. Lee, and other students and staff in the department were chosen as a group (also pictured below) to receive the grant. The grant will fund their idea of creating a sponge that will potentially create cleaner drinking water and reverse oil spill damage. Following prior years\u2019 statistics, approximately only twenty teams in the country are approved for Phase l, and of those twenty only three progress to Phase ll each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n