Student Spotlight

For Juan, his love for engineering began as a child. When he was four years old, his father brought home a magazine that contained information and pictures about airplanes. This small magazine ignited his passion for airplanes and aerospace technology before he could even read. As Juan grew, so did his love for engineering. He has always enjoyed the design aspect of the field and loved the idea of creating something that could benefit other people.

On his road to becoming a professional engineer, Juan found himself in Provo, Utah, which is far away from his hometown of Patagonia, Argentina. Juan came to Provo to learn English at the English Language Center (ELC) at Brigham Young University. He always intended to come to the United States in order to learn English and then travel back to Argentina for college. However, Juan fell in love with the environment at BYU. He said that he was inspired by those around him to do a better job and to become a better person. Due to this, he decided to apply to BYU, which wouldn’t be easy.

Once Juan decided that he wanted to attend BYU, he had to go through an excruciatingly long and difficult process. First, he had to take the ACT multiple times until he could obtain a score high enough to get in. On top of this, he had to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). This test is an international proficiency test that international students must take in order to prove that they have mastered the language well enough to succeed in a university environment. For Juan, this would prove to be a challenge because he had only been learning English for a year prior to taking the exam. Despite all of these obstacles, Juan studied and persevered in order to pass both the ACT and the TOEFL to gain admittance to BYU.

Juan rejoiced! He could finally begin his pursuit of receiving a degree in engineering – or so he thought. Upon acceptance into BYU, Juan found out that he had to apply for the mechanical engineering program. He continued to work hard in his classes and study plenty in order to receive good enough marks to get into the program. After serving a two-year mission in Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he had forgotten many of the subjects he had learned. Due to this, he had to retake math in order to receive high enough scores to get in. Finally, after years of hard work, Juan had been accepted into the mechanical engineering program and could continue working towards his dream of becoming an aerospace engineer.

Juan is now a mechanical engineering student with an emphasis in aerospace engineering going into his senior year at BYU. Juan loves being active in numerous clubs, including rocketry and aeronautics. These clubs provided him with hobbies that he had never had the resources to do prior to coming to BYU, such as flying remote controlled airplanes. He is also an active participant in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). Through SHPE, he was able to acquire his current co-op job. For the past eight months, Juan has been working for Collins Aerospace which is a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies. He has been working on aircraft cargo systems and has been able to write documents and design his own products for the aircraft. Juan highly recommends co-ops over internships for other students because they provide longer experiences that allow students to work more on their own projects.

In his free time, Juan enjoys spending time outside and with his family. Juan and his wife have two wonderful kids that keep life fun. He also enjoys reading books. He used to read to master the English language, but fell in love with it. Although he is an engineer in his professional life, he also loves designing and building things in his personal life as well. If he sees something he can improve, he will start planning, designing, and building it.

We are so glad that Juan persevered through all the obstacles that life threw at him in order to attend BYU and are very lucky to have him as part of our student body.