Senior Reflects: Engineering Major Danielly DeMiranda Ribeiro on the Campus Opportunities that Shaped her Rowan Experience

Danielly celebrates commencement with her family.

Peer Tutor. Women in Engineering Club Treasurer. AIChE student chapter class representative. Chemical Engineering major Danielly DeMiranda Ribeiro stayed active on campus and online as Covid-19 surged through her college career. Now, with her degree in hand and a position with the pharmaceutical company Merck, Daneilly shares her best Rowan memories and her words of wisdom. 

Danielly, from Sussex County, is also part of the Honors College and a Spanish minor.

What was your favorite social memory? 

One of the best ones was going bowling with my graduating class. This is something that we did twice this semester because … junior year you’re supposed to make all these friends, but we were online. So we never actually met a lot of the people in our graduating class until senior year. And then our last semester we got much closer together. And we found out that the Bowlero down in Turnersville, they do $3 games on Tuesdays. Our classes ended at 7:45, so we’d get straight from class from 8 until 11 and just bowl. That was pretty fun. 

Danielly and her bowling team.
Bowling at the Bowlero with senior Chemical Engineering students. From left to right (back row): Peter Yochim, Chancellor Donahue, Paul Cally, James Geier, Zachary Rosenzweig, Justin Friel, Jacob Engime. Middle Row: Mackenzie Vukicevich, Courtney LeMasney, Branden Hansen, Nicholas Altieri. Bottom Row: Sherilynn Garcia, Eunice Nepomuceno, Danielly (right).

Who was your favorite professor? And what class did you take with them?

That is so hard. I have had a lot of good professors. I love Dr. Yenkie. She teaches Process Dynamics and Controls and this Applied Process Optimization class. And she taught it so well. … And Dr. Meadowcroft. He taught, I think, four of my chemical engineering classes. And he’s just great. He has [something] like 30 years of experience in industry. He created a whole class last semester, this elective called Process Control Design Practice – PCDP, about things that are not currently taught in schools. And there are not a lot of engineers that know how to do it. But he did it for like 15 years or more. So he taught this whole class, and it was really applicable, I saw it. I had an internship over the summer where I started learning a little bit about it, and now I understand why they do that.

How did the people or programs at Rowan help to support you with your professional growth or career aspirations?

I think definitely, some of the professors were great mentors. If I had any questions towards careers, I had one of them like Dr. Meadowcroft, he took the time out of his day to look over my resume, take notes at everything, helped me with all of these things, and just give us solid advice on things that he knows. Definitely, the professors helped me. Different courses [also] helped me see what’s out there. 

Being part of clubs, I was able to be better with public speaking and get more experience. I was the treasurer for the Women in Engineering Club. And so I had to develop a budget and be more money conscious in a way. Because if you’re just running a club, you can say, oh, I want to do this, this and this, but we need to have money saved for that and just all that allocation, and going up to SGA and saying we need this much money answering all those questions through the budgeting process. So I got to have a lot of different skills honed throughout the four years. 

Danielly with friends at an ice skating rink.
Danielly ice skates at a 2018 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) event with roommates Sarah Libby and Alison Silvestri (right).

[With] clinic you’re doing research, you get exposed to the research side of engineering, where you’re working in the lab and doing everything every day. You get the research writing because you have to do a big report at the end and a presentation. So a combination of all these things. 

Tutoring was also a big one where I learned to translate technical information to people who may not understand it. I taught Chemistry I and II. Sometimes I’d be talking about making a cake. And to explain limiting reactants and instead of using methanol and ethanol, maybe I said ok, we have flour and eggs, something more tangible to help translate that technical information down to something that’s more easily understandable. And that’s a skill that’s invaluable because you’re going to be in a room with people from all sorts of backgrounds and you need to be able to take technical, hardcore information that not a lot of people understand and break it down. 

So a lot of it just really helped me have a good skill set to prepare me for industry, for the future and just get perspective on what I want to do with my career.

How did you discover the peer tutoring position?

It was my freshman year, and I was in my Spanish class. My professor pulled me to the side and said we don’t have Spanish tutors at the university, I think you’d be a good fit. And she just suggested it. And then I went to my chemistry class. I would just help my classmates around because I’ve always done it since high school, I go around and like to help people if they need help. And my professor also mentioned I should tutor, so I decided to look into it. I went to the Tutoring Center, talked to Laura Repsher. Later that summer, I did a phone interview. And I was tutoring by the first fall semester of my sophomore year. So from there, I just stayed a tutor. And she was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had, just always very flexible. We can make our own schedule, work the hours that we are able to because I have a demanding schedule at times. So maybe I could only tutor three hours a week. But then the next semester, it’s five, and this past semester was four. So here and there, I just kept, you know, it’s a good fit for me, because I could just do it however I wanted. 

Tutoring is always really fun and really rewarding. For me, I enjoy making the connection with the students, a lot of the ones that I tutor, they would always come back and stay with me for the whole semester, like this semester, I think I tutor the same four or five people every week till the end. And you just build that connection. You see the improvement, the impact you’re making in these people’s lives because they could be struggling, maybe not looking for help. But they’re putting in the work every day and coming in two, three times a week, they go to two or three other tutors and to get things right and learn. And it’s just very rewarding for me … that’s very much solidified in my head to help others.

And I’ve definitely worked over 300 hours. With my semesters, I would say like 50 to 60 students, I don’t know, because a lot of them just kept coming back. I don’t really know the number of students, but it’s definitely been something that I did at least once a week.

Danielly with friends at commencement.
Alison Silvestri, Sarah Libby and Danielly celebrate their commencement.

Do you want to give a thank you shout out to your family, friends, advisors or mentors?

Yes! Definitely my roommate Allison; if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today. My whole family. My mom, my sister. My girlfriend Isabella who supported me through my senior year of college! Generational Warfare, our Landmark Trivia Club team. I also want to definitely shout out to the DiPierro family. I had a full ride to Rowan through a scholarship. Today, they’re the ones that actually got me through college. All of my professors, I couldn’t be here without them. I just had a great experience at Rowan and they really did a great, great job. 

What are your career aspirations?

Right now I have a job lined up. I am going to work for Merck in Durham, North Carolina, as a process engineer. I will be supporting their bladder cancer treatments.

What advice would you give to incoming first year students or transfers about making the most of their college experience?

Get involved. It’s always a fun time when you build a community around you, you get to meet people, people that are not in your major, people that are older than you and you really get to see a lot more that Rowan has to offer than just going to classes. Volunteering is always a fun time. Maybe going bowling on Tuesdays and trivia at Landmark come one day! It’s the little things here and there, you know, just really be social and have a good time. Because these are the four years where you have time to do everything. And even though it seems like you don’t with a lot of assignments and everything, you’re going to find some time to squeeze things in and still have a great memory of your college experience. 

Danielly with friends and classmates at commencement.
Students in the Chemical Engineering class. Back row: Gurpreet Singh, Bradley Smith, Brendan Hanse, Jacob Engime, Justin Friel, James Geier, Courtney LeMasney, Danielly, Zachary Rosenzweig, Casey Garrell, Adam Griefer, Paul Cally, Maya Webb. Front Row: Steven Cook, Sherilynn Garcia, Mackenzie Vukicevich, Eunice Nepomuceno, Peter Yochim.

Is there anything else you would like to look back on and reflect on regarding your time at Rowan?

You always wish you always had a little bit more time. We lost a whole year, being inside, really didn’t get to do much around … I really appreciate Rowan being able to let us at least live on campus. That was a huge help. It’s just been a very good and very fun time. At Rowan, I’m so glad I came here. I got a quality education and the campus that just allowed me to do so much and be involved with anything I wanted to do and still just is surrounded by a lot of people that just every day just really care about you and want you to be successful. I’m just so excited for everything and so happy and so grateful for everything that I had. It’s just all very good.

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Photos courtesy of:
Danielly DeMiranda Ribeiro

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