Fabulous Freshmen

The eight members of the Class of 2007 who are featured in this article share a common bond with the generations of Embry-Riddle freshmen who preceded them. Like their 1,813 first-year classmates, they are passionate about aviation and aerospace and focused on studying and working hard to give wings to their dreams. As you read about them, we invite you to compare how things have changed - and remained the same - since you began your own experience with Embry-Riddle.

Tuan Tran
"In late June of 1991, a boat carried more than 100 souls, including my family of four, away from the mainland of Vietnam toward the South China Sea. I was seven at the time and did not know where we were going through the darkness of the sea." So begins Tuan Tran's gripping story of his family's quest for freedom, as he penned it for his Embry-Riddle admission essay.

After three years in Hong Kong refugee camps, they made it to the United States, where an aunt awaited them in Apple Valley, Minn., a world apart from Vietnam. He remembers his frustration and tears when he started school a month later, unable to speak a word of English. But, thanks to a dedicated teacher and his own determination and hard work, he mastered his new language. Eight years later, he graduated from high school among the top students in his class.

He chose Embry-Riddle for its reputation for producing aerospace engineering graduates who get good jobs and for its smaller enrollment and close teacher-student interaction. His dream is "to design a plane that will make transportation easier for people." Using the AutoCAD computer program, he's already designed eight fighter jets, his hobby and passion. His tastes in reading range from the futuristic novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, to The Republic, by Plato.

A week before beginning classes, he admitted to feeling nervous and having mixed feelings about leaving his family and friends. "But," he says philosophically, "a person has to go out and see what the world is like." His life experiences have given him a unique perspective and a maturity, discipline, and drive to succeed that will serve him well.

Stephen Koslik
Stephen Koslik likes to push himself. An early indicator should have been his decision at the age of five to be a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot when he grew up. When the Tallahassee, Fla., native was in middle school, he took up speed skating, going on to become a national champion and the winner of two bronze medals. But after a 25-foot fall from a tree fractured his back and sidelined him from skating for a year, he turned his attention to rowing. In high school, he rowed for four years, spending three years on the varsity crew team.

He says a lot of people would have liked to see him go to college in town, at Florida State University, hoping he would help coach his high school crew team. In fact, he was already planning to start at FSU during the summer term when he got a letter from Embry-Riddle's Air Force ROTC detachment, inviting him to come and take a look. The Air Force had earlier selected him for one of its prestigious Type I scholarships. He went for a visit on a Wednesday, returned home, went online, and cancelled his classes at FSU, which were to start the next Monday. He chose Embry-Riddle because "it's one of the top aeronautical schools in the country and it has a very honorable Air Force ROTC detachment."

He describes himself as "very social. I love talking and listening and learning about people." He says most people would be surprised to learn that he doesn't drink alcohol. "Never touched a drop."

He eagerly anticipates the challenges that Embry-Riddle will offer him. "High school bored me," he says. "Working 25 hours a week at a country club and rowing three hours a day five days a week, I still got my best grades my senior year." He also found time to volunteer for the St. Francis Wildlife Foundation, showing injured birds of prey, mainly red-tailed hawks, owls, and his favorite, the American kestrel, to local schoolchildren. He liked it so much he says he considered a career in ornithology. But then he heard from Embry-Riddle.

Amber Gell
Amber Gell today would be a freshman at the U.S. Air Force Academy, the school she first planned to attend, had her family not vacationed in Orlando four years ago. That's when her parents decided to visit Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach campus for the sake of her older sister, who was also interested in aerospace engineering. "I was upset," the Milwaukee native recalls. "I didn't want to spoil my vacation with a college visit." But she went along anyway, and fell in love with Embry-Riddle. "Everyone was so friendly and personable," she says. "They showed us the machines in the labs, and students who were using them would stop and tell us what they were doing. I liked the fact that everything was so hands-on, and you could see how things are applied right away."

She is not one to stand by if she can try new or better ways of doing things instead. Although she had played soccer since seventh grade, she walked away from the sport during her senior year in order to try pole vaulting. But in her free time, she watched the boys' soccer team play. After listening to the players gripe about the positions and plays they were being asked to execute, she passed their ideas on the coach. "Next game, he used my lineup and they won, so he asked me to manage the team," she says. "I managed the whole season and they won the tournament."

When the call went out to National Honor Society members in her high school to tutor a sixth-grader who had a learning disability, she stepped forward again. She also helped organize a drive to collect food and clothing for a local shelter.

She's looking forward to moving toward her life dream. "I want to be involved with NASA in some way, designing and testing space ships or airplanes." One of her most prized possessions is a recent gift from her sister - a 12-inch scale model of a candy-apple red Dodge Viper, the car of her dreams. "I've always studied with a picture of a Viper nearby to motivate me," she says. "It's the first thing I'm going to buy when I finish paying off all my bills."

Troy Sponaugle II
The pictures of aircraft hanging in Troy Sponaugle II's dorm room have a special meaning for him. "Man wasn't meant to fly, but airplanes allow us to. That kind of explains me," says Sponaugle, who was diagnosed in the first grade with learning disabilities in language, visual and perceptual motor skills, and auditory processing, enjoys defying expectations. "Someone may not have expected me to do what I've done. Airplanes are free spirits, and so am I. I create my own path." He is pleased that most people who meet him are surprised to learn about his learning difficulties. "Anybody with a disability can succeed," he says. "You have to push yourself and be pushed. It all depends on how much you want to do something. I tend to work harder than most people and therefore I learn and retain things. That's how I succeed, my work ethic."

In high school, the Fairfax, Va., native was active in athletics - baseball, football, and snow skiing - and in building and flying rockets and kites. He also was vice president of his senior class. "I like to challenge my mind and my body," he says. In recognition of his successes, he received an Anne Ford Scholarship for 2002, awarded by the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

His future plans involve designing exciting new aircraft, rockets - "anything that flies" - for an aerospace contractor. To get there, he chose Embry-Riddle, "because it is, by far, the best school for aerospace engineering. Look at the No. 1 ranking in U.S. News & World Report." Clinching his decision, however, was a visit he made last summer to the university's Daytona Beach campus, where he had a talk with John Novy, associate professor of aerospace engineering. "He gave me confidence in the university. It was a joy to talk to him," he says. Being a college freshman means "redefining myself and creating a new independence in my life," he says. "It's really exciting and scary - a million different emotions wrapped up together - but it's great."

Donamika Austin
The way Donamika Austin holds it in her cupped hands, the little dragon with its tail wrapped around a crystal ball might just as well be alive. She gave the statue to her aunt when she was five years old, but got it back a decade later when her aunt died. "My little dragon is a symbol of myself," she says. "When I look at it, I see it protecting the one thing that it loves in the best way it knows how. That's me. I will protect those I love in the best way I know how until the end of time."

She is fiercely loyal to her mother, who raised her alone in Columbus, Ohio, and who moved to Phoenix last summer to be near her daughter's campus in Prescott. "Everything that I've done and still do is to better myself and make my mom proud to say that I'm her child," she says. In high school, those points of pride included playing softball and tennis, running track, and playing saxophone in the band. "I like anything that's extremely competitive," she says.

Her dream for the future is to help those she loves by doing something she loves to do. "I want to be an aerospace engineer, designing, flying, and building both air and space crafts. I want to be able to build and design a couple of automobiles, houses, and maybe even a submarine." She is confident that Embry-Riddle will help her achieve her goals.

One of the reasons she chose the Prescott campus is that "it's close like a family. It's small, which to me means a better teaching and learning environment. Everyone is so friendly and helpful. If you need any kind of assistance there are so many people who will help you. At many other universities, the faculty could care less if you do well, but here they care." For someone who describes herself as being "determined, stubborn, and skeptical," that means a lot. One little dragon has found a protective place to spread her wings.

Stan Leon
"I'm a survivor, an innovator, and a very persistent person," Stan Leon says as a matter of fact. "I classify myself as a survivor every time I look back into my life and realize that I've overcome many obstacles." When he was younger, his mother's affliction with schizophrenia grew so bad that the state removed him and his sisters from their family and placed them in foster homes. "Her severe symptoms made it hard to communicate with her," he recalls. In the next several years, he was in and out of boy's homes and foster homes and moved from school to school, an experience that put his life in turmoil and made it difficult to study. At the age of nine, he was placed into a permanent foster home in Covina, Calif. "The Patterson family accepted me full-heartedly," he says.

"I have realized that an education is a very important factor in life, which brings me to my next description, that I am an innovator. I understand that in this world copycats finish last in the human race. For this reason, I have developed a sense of creativity, originality, and imagination. Finally, in my opinion, creativity without persistence cannot reach its full potential." It's hard not to be inspired by his positive outlook on life, as was Rosie O'Donnell, who selected him as one of her Super Kids and flew him to New York last fall to appear on her television show Rosie.

Surprisingly, though, he states that his greatest personal triumph is "my acceptance and attendance at Embry-Riddle, a lifelong dream of mine." His next major goal is a job in the left seat of a Boeing 777 aircraft, a feat he believes studying at the Prescott campus will help him achieve. "It's is a great place to study," he says. "The people are friendly, the weather conditions are perfect for flying, and the countryside is beautiful." He pauses. "I like the bragging rights that come with being an Embry-Riddle student."

Jamail Larkins
Jamail Larkins has done more in 18 years than many who are twice his age, and he's just started. The native of Augusta, Ga., first soloed in Canada at the age of 14, because he was too young to do it in the United States. His early interest in flying, coupled with his willingness to introduce himself to the right people, resulted in his being appointed a spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association's Young Eagles program and the Careers in Aviation program of Embry-Riddle and Delta Air Lines. He also has a first-degree black belt in tae kwon do, and was student body president as a high school senior, although the two are not connected.

But his greatest achievement, he says, was getting his low-altitude aerobatic waiver in August, two days before he came to Embry-Riddle to start classes. "That was a lot of work," he says. "There are so many things you have to demonstrate to the FAA aerobatic competency evaluator - snap rolls, hammer heads, spins, and the full aerobatic sequence you plan to do at air shows. But the hardest part is flying inside a 3,000-by-3,000-foot aerobatic 'box'." To date, he's racked up more than 150 hours on "the ultimate rollercoaster."

Although he'd been thinking about Embry-Riddle since he was 13, he also considered Wake Forest University. "What really sold me was when I came down [to the Daytona Beach campus] last spring for a visit. That's when I knew this was the place I needed to be." So far, Embry-Riddle has met his expectations. He likes the wireless technology in the classrooms and the fact that he can bring his laptop to lectures, but groans at his course load. As much as he loves flying, he's majoring in business. "I hope to have my own aviation company eventually," he says, "or to be in a senior-level management position in one."

When he's not flying aerobatics or in the classroom, he's likely to be talking on his cell phone. "It's the way I stay connected with the world," he says. "I use it to check my e-mail and talk to my friends, family, and customers." Those customers represent another of his activities - an Internet-based business he started when he was 15. Representing Gulf Coast Avionics, King Schools, and Rod Machado, he sells flight-training materials, from books and videos to avionics, GPS devices and headsets. "It's how I pay for my travel," he says with a smile.

Corey Robinson
Corey Robinson loves shooting hoops, going to the beach, playing her guitar, and drag racing. "A typical California lifestyle," says the San Diego native. In high school, the self-described "huge basketball fanatic" captained her varsity team as a senior and coached the JV team. She was also a leader in her school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter and in peer mediation and counseling.

Those latter commitments help explain her response during the spring of her junior year to a shooting at Santana High School, 30 minutes away from her high school. She and a close friend made 2,500 purple-and-gold ribbons in the shape of the pink cancer symbol. They also created seven posters that most of their fellow students signed. Later that week they took the posters and ribbons to their peers at Santana.

For fun, she likes to drive very fast, but not just in any car. "I refuse to buy or drive a car that is not a stick shift!" she says. For the time being, though, her drag racing is unofficial. "I have yet to try it in a real competition," she says.

What attracted her to Embry-Riddle, she says, is its "unbeatable reputation, student-to-teacher ratio, and amazing facilities. I love the fact that students and staff are so friendly here [at the Prescott campus]. I was honestly surprised at how many people would either smile or say Hi as I passed them in the halls."

Although she began her freshman year planning to be a pilot, she's made a career change. "My instincts tell me to pursue a career in teaching mathematics and coaching basketball." She's confident that Embry-Riddle's "solid math and science program" will help her reach her goals. She says two things in her dorm room keep her in touch with who she is. The first is her guitar. "Playing the guitar is a very spiritual experience for me," she says. "I communicate best through music and lyrics." The second item is a hang-up basketball hoop. "No matter where I go, my past memories are always with me, both the good and the bad." Corey Robinson can look forward to a future of many good memories.

The Freshman Experience Online
During the 2002-2003 academic year, eight freshmen are chronicling their experiences at Embry-Riddle in an online journal. To read their comments, go to www.erau.edu/experience.