“At Berkeley, I met the love of my life and my best friends. I got a great education that prepared me for a career in higher ed. I had a great time. It was transformational.” Dr. Reginald DesRoches — president of Rice University and, incredibly, a three-time UC Berkeley alum (BS ’90 Mechanical Engineering; MS ’92 Civil Engineering; PhD ’98 Structural Engineering) — grew up in Queens, NY as the youngest in a Haitian immigrant family.  In a home where expectations were clear, his father had a mantra: “Be a lawyer, doctor, engineer, or disappointment.” It only made sense that the kid who loved tinkering and watching airplanes fly would choose engineering. His curiosity led him to UC Berkeley as a mechanical engineering undergrad, when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit. “It really changed my perspective on what I wanted to study,” he says — a tectonic shift that led him to structural earthquake engineering. At Berkeley, he found community in BESAC (Black Engineering and Science Alumn...