Meet Our Alumni
Ray Stevens '86
- Close Mentoring Can Make the Difference
Ray Stevens ’86 knows better than most how a good professor can change a life. In the early 1980s, Stevens was a bright but undisciplined student. John Ricci was a stern but encouraging chemistry professor and advisor who saw beyond Stevens’ periodic poor grades and found great potential.
Today, Stevens has his own lab at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., the largest biomedical research facility in the United States. He is a generous supporter of science education at USM. The cornerstone of Stevens’ support is the John S. Ricci Fellowship, which brings USM students to the Scripps Institute each summer for 12 weeks of research. It replicates an experience Ricci once shared with Stevens at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y.
“I would like to see another student from USM get the same chance I have been given,” Stevens says, “There's no question in my mind if I had not met John Ricci and had him as an advisor I probably would not have graduated from college.”
Ricci's name on the project is a metaphor.
“The faculty-student relationships you find at USM are absolutely incredible in how they can shape someone's life,” Stevens says. “I'd rather my kids go to a school like USM because of the close faculty-student mentoring in comparison to larger schools, where professors are mostly unavailable to the students. At that particular stage of their lives, close mentoring can make the difference in what they do with the rest of their lives.”
And who would know that better than Ray Stevens?
