Fall — 2004

Aviva Presser

SMC Student 2001,
Chemical Engineering,
SMC-UCLA-MIT

“SMC was a completely worthwhile experience. You learn that—in a university—teaching is only a kind of sideline. But at SMC, your teachers are there for only one purpose: teaching.”

“I learned so much at SMC—at least as much as I would have learned at a university—because of the smaller class sizes and the time I got to spend with my professors,” says Aviva Presser, who’s now at MIT in a prestigious PhD program in Chemical Engineering. “I mean, I keep in touch with more of my SMC professors than I do with those in other places I’ve studied.” And yet, when Aviva first arrived at SMC, it was with some concern.

“I was afraid that SMC would be some kind of ‘pushover’ school; a sort of extension of high school. But then I met Dr. Jeffrey Bresloff in the Physics department, who is a very, very entertaining person who thinks physics is really cool. And I think Physics is really cool as well, so it all worked out really well. It was a very challenging course, but Dr. Bresloff was very approachable, so I would literally haunt his office hours during my first semester. And because of this spectacular teacher,” Aviva continues, “my eyes were opened to the kind of excellence that people can expect at SMC. I would say, without question, that SMC offered me a better background for engineering than the people who started out as freshmen at UCLA, especially in terms of math and physics,” says Aviva. “SMC freshmen are required to take a course in differential equations to transfer to UCLA. But the freshmen there don’t have the same training. So that was a tremendous advantage for me.”

Having switched from medicine to pure math to a stint in Israel attending a religious seminar for personal growth, Aviva expresses happiness in now pursuing her doctorate at MIT, one of the world’s pre-eminent technical universities. “But SMC is so much more than just a bridge,” she says. “I actually took a glass-blowing class there. Other than science, art is my thing. And when you get to SMC, you’ll find a plethora of things to discover, learn, and enjoy.”

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