When you hear a reference to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), you think about knowledge, education, innovation and brilliance.
Sitting down with Jose Godinez (Junior, Chemistry) was a reminder of those same words.
Godinez was nominated for the DOW-MIT Access program by California State University, Stanislaus (Stan State) by the Assistant Professor of Physical and Biophysical Chemistry, Dr. Elvin Aleman.
According to the MIT website, “the Access program is an initiative that is geared towards encouraging more students from diverse backgrounds to apply to graduate and PhD programs throughout the United States”.
Godinez is an American citizen who immigrated from Mexico with his family in 2010 after the 2008 U.S.A. economic crash which also affected Mexico’s economy.
“There was the violence [where we lived] and as of 2008 the economic issue of the United States trickled down to Mexico. My dad lost his job and my mom didn’t have a job, so we decided to apply for choice visa since my brother already lived in the U.S.,” Godinez said.
The family decided to leave Jalisco, Mexico and join Godinez’s older brother who moved to the United States many years before the crash.
Godinez is now a resident of the U.S. and a thriving student on our campus with big aspirations for himself. His background is very similar to those the program targets to positively influence and encourage to achieve at a higher level than average.
Although MIT hosts the event, it is not necessarily built to recruit students to their campus.
As MIT is one of the nation’s foremost institutions on technology and engineering, it serves the students better to gather at such a place where the goal is to reach out to students who are interested in fields like chemistry, chemical engineering and materials science.
Godinez spoke about why the program appealed to him.
“[It was] a way to encourage people to go to grad school, especially since people feel insecure about it. There’s the option of going to work or going to grad school…but you [will] be poor for 5 more years so this gives us better information to make a choice.”
Godinez took part in the weekend long Access Program, which included various group activities for networking as well as a short presentation debuting the students passionate ideas or showcasing work the student currently participates in on their respective campuses.
The research he is currently involved in here at Stan State is under the advising of Dr. Aleman.  Their research is focused on DNA repair mechanisms.
“We use a technique called FRET, which is of related to biology and physical chemistry. The main purpose of it is to understand how a specific enzyme repairs DNA which has been damaged by UV-light. We know what repairs it, but we don’t know how it happens,” Godinez said.
Godinez loves the work he does and is sure that the experience of the Access program made a positive impact on in his academic career.
He already had intentions of going to graduate school, but this interactive program cleared up any doubts he previously had.
“I think the best choice is to get a PhD because as more people get a degree they become competitive in the market. The PhD will have a wider range of opportunities,” Godinez said.
Godinez has aspirations of becoming a teacher for the main reason that he believes you shouldn’t go to graduate school for the money but for the knowledge that one can attain and use to give back to others.
“I don’t want to get a degree just to get money, that’s not me. I don’t feel like money is going to give me happiness. I feel like getting more education and providing knowledge to other people will do that,” Godinez said.
Currently he is working in a laboratory in Merced that is focused on materials sciences, but he is looking forward to jumping into a field which more readily applies to what he wants to do in the future.
Looking forward to graduate school at the completion of next year’s classes, Godinez hopes to be attending University of California, Berkeley where the focus would be on nuclear and physical chemistry.
“One of the schools, that is probably the best one for me, is UC Berkeley, which has a really strong background in physical chemistry and specifically nuclear chemistry working with Livermore labs. They have the credit for elements they discovered there like Livermorium, Seaborgium, and Berkelium.”
UC Berkeley can stake claims to the discovery of about 16 different elements including Californium and Americium.
With a reputation of this magnitude in nuclear chemistry it is definitely a university that stands out to chemists around the world.   
When asking Godinez what he would name an element if he was ever lucky enough to discover a new one, his remark was, “I’d use a J for my element. They’re really lacking the letter J. They’re not being represented at all.”