South Guilford News

Every morning at the foot of his bed, right in front of his mirror, Michael Scutari sees his life on his dresser.

There’s a photo of him and his dad. He’s six months old, in a New York Yankees cap.  There’s also a baseball, the game ball, from a time when he was a 12-year-old pitcher playing for a local team called the Yankees.

 And there’s also a Slinky. It’s from his first semester physics class at The Early College at Guilford. He discovered it during a scavenger hunt created by Dr. Don Smith, a Guilford College professor who got his doctorate in physics from MIT.

“He’s a wonderful human,” Michael says.

Michael graduated May 25 from The Early College during an early-morning ceremony at the Swarm Fieldhouse at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. This fall, he’ll become a student at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and let his intellectual curiosity roam.

Before The Early College, Michael’s life revolved around baseball.

Not anymore.

“The Early College,” he says, “helped me look at the holistic picture of my life and be a more compassionate person. I recognize the value of education.”

More Than Just a School

Michael first heard about The Early College through a couple of friends. They applied so he applied. He saw it, as he says today, “a super nerdy thing.” But once he went through the interview process and talked to the teachers and professors, he knew he was going.

He met teacher Rebecca Johnson-Kaiserman. He later took her world history class. Michael called her “Ms. JK.” He was taken by how she saw the world and how she weaved civics and economics into her lessons.

She helped Michael see school as much more than a place where you learned random knowledge. Michael saw school as a place where what you learned helped you become who you wanted to be.

During his first semester at The Early College, Michael took chemistry and math. But he also took a class in Japanese.

During subsequent years, he took a sculpture class that taught him how to weld, and he took an acting class where he worked on writing short scenes. He also took an English class where one assignment had him and other students playing a video game for six consecutive hours and writing about their experience.

Then came a class he never even thought about taking. But in his senior year, he did.

Michael’s Holistic Self Emerges

To Michael, the religion course sounded interesting – and it included a trip to Japan. So, Michael enrolled in a course called “Mindfulness and Social Action.” It was a class on Buddhism taught by Dr. Eric Mortensen, associate professor of religious studies at Guilford College. 

Before Michael started the class, Mortensen interviewed every student.

The global pandemic ended up canceling the class trip to Japan. Still, when Michael sat down and talked with Mortensen, he knew he made the right decision. Mortensen, who had studied at Harvard, shared with Michael how Buddhism shaped his view of the world.

Michael found that sense of openness and intellectual curiosity with every professor, every student he met at The Early College.

“I’ve always been interested in discovery,” Michael says. “But after I’ve been through this whole experience at The Early College, I’m excited about learning about anything. Just learning about new people and their perspective and why they’re passionate about things.

“With everyone I’ve interacted with at The Early College, from professors and students, I’ve met someone who is passionate about what they do,” he says. “I was always finding something new. A new story. A new person. A problem I didn’t see.

“It all helped me better myself.”

Moving Beyond the Classroom

His freshman year, Michael joined the school’s Service Awareness Integration Club. By his sophomore year, he became the secretary and began organizing events every month. He’d learn about a cause, inform members, and they’d volunteer their time beyond the classroom.

That included deep-cleaning one of the school’s public spaces or helping fund a non-profit that gives food to families and people in need. It also meant collecting old plastic bags, weaving them into squares and turning them into sleeping mats for people who didn’t have a home.

He became the vice president of the school’s first chess club his sophomore year. By his junior year, he created the ECG Coding Club with fellow classmate, Anika Suman.

They at first wanted to teach students coding. But students knew how to code, and the club’s focus shifted. They began going to competitions and creating a coding summer camp for local elementary and middle school students.

During the global pandemic, Michael used the 3-D printer he received as a gift from his grandparents as his own goodwill tool. He created an inch-thick headband that became part of a face shield he gave to teachers, doctors, and elderly residents like his grandparents.

They wore it to protect themselves from a deadly virus.

Michael made more than 800 face shields. It cost him less than $200.

“You’d see all these individuals working in hospitals, responding to emergencies and putting their lives at risk, and I kept asking myself, ‘What can I do staying at home?’” Michael says. “Well, I knew I could make at least 800 face shields. That’s nothing on the scale of the pandemic, but it felt nice doing something.”

Then there is SEAL Robotics Team –– the SEAL stands for Science Engineering Automation Leadership. The team attracts students from area high schools. Ask Michael about the team, and he tells a story about a contraption a little bigger than a shoebox.

He also talks about triumph. And another trinket on his dresser at the foot of his bed.

 The Importance of Mentorship

Last June, at East Tennessee State University, Michael and the seven other members of the team competed against 53 teams from across the country as well as Scotland, Egypt, Hong Kong and Macau, an island off the coast of China.

The event was known as the Mate International ROV Competition, and SEAL Robotics brought with them a Remotely Operated Vehicle, also known as an ROV.

The ROV was little more than 15 inches long and attached to a giant tether connected to a laptop and a power-supply unit. The tether was as thick as a garden hose.

For months, members of SEAL Robotics had fine-tuned their ROV both in their advisor’s garage and the pool at the Lake Jeanette Swim and Tennis Club because they knew what they faced at East Tennessee State. 

Their ROV had to perform various real-world challenges such as submerging in a pool and performing some sort of a task.

Three years ago, at the international ROV Competition, in Kingsport, Tennessee, SEAL Robotics came in No. 5. They wanted to do better. They did. Last summer, they came in second and became the No. 2 robotics team in the world.

The team got a plaque. Michael got something, too. He received the Engineering MVP Award for the best engineering presentation. He stood before a panel of judges and explained how SEAL Robotics developed their ideas and created their ROV.

Michael would know all about that. He has been the team’s CEO for the past two years. Before that, he was the team’s Chief Technology Officer. But that leadership didn’t just happen. There’s a story in that, too.

Michael joined the team as a freshman at The Early College, and he felt so out of place. He didn’t know what was going on, and he kept telling himself, “Man, I’m holding these people back.”

But at The Early College, he learned the importance of asking questions. 

With SEAL Robotics, he used that skill of asking questions to learn. He learned in other ways, too. He had a robotics mentor, Ned Voorhees, the team’s advisor. He had his parents, Daniel and Jessamy. They supported him every step of the way.

Then there are his mentors at The Early College. They all taught him well.

He now keeps his Engineering MVP Award on his dresser along with his baseball, his Slinkie, and his photo of him and his dad. He sees that award, a geometric shaped pane of glass, every morning. For Michael, that award reminds him of an invaluable lesson.

“It’s not where you are, it’s the people you choose to surround yourself with,” he says. “And at The Early College and Guilford College, the quality of people I’ve met, and the range of their passions is a motivation for everyone there to be a force for change.”

Original source can be found here.