Spring/Summer 2011
Victor Glover remembers as a fifth grader going to MESA Days at Harvey Mudd College for mousetrap car and balsa wood bridge competitions. He remembers his excitement for math and science. His MESA advisor told him he could be an engineer and it sounded cool.
Glover, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and F-18 pilot, got even more from MESA when he tutored middle school students as an engineering major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He and other Cal Poly MESA students would visit local middle schools to tutor MESA students there. Bringing concepts he learned in his college engineering courses and applying them to MESA day projects so middle school students could understand is Glover’s most powerful MESA memory.
“Tutoring made me like school that much more and it was a good resource for me,” he said. “It sounds selfish, but it made me a better student because I began to follow the advice I gave to them. If you look at my transcripts my grades went from average to deans’ list when I started tutoring.”
An added bonus – he went on many of those tutoring trips with another Cal Poly student. She later become his wife.
Glover knew how important it was for students at that age to have exposure to college like he did as a MESA middle school student. So he would not only help the Flamson Middle School students with MESA day projects and school assignments, but also talk to them about social topics and the challenges of adolescence. He enjoyed giving back.
Glover continued on the road of giving back when he joined the Navy in 1998 through a program that allowed him to complete college first. He earned a bachelor’s degree in general engineering from Cal Poly in 1999. After Officer’s School he later earned master’s degrees in military operational arts and science, flight test engineering and systems engineering. He flew 24 combat missions over Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Currently, Glover is stationed in Japan with his wife and four daughters on a two and a half year tour. He’s training on the new F-18 Super Hornet, but Glover has aspirations to fly even higher.
“I want a shot at being an astronaut eventually,” he said. “Long term, though, I want to teach aeronautical engineering at a college and be a MESA faculty advisor. That way I’d still get to do a little bit of all the things I like to do.”
The son of a police officer and bookkeeper, Glover was the first in his family to finish college. He was offered scholarships to several out-of-state schools, but wanted to stay in California and accepted a wrestling scholarship at Cal Poly. Being a student athlete was difficult at first, but MESA helped.
“MESA was phenomenal. The club meetings, study hall, checking out books, tutoring. So many resources at our fingertips,” he said. “When I started (at Cal Poly) I gravitated toward MESA. I had an affinity to the program because of that experience in the fifth grade.”
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