A Place to Belong and Room to Take Flight.
Long before Vinit Dudani began studying mechanical engineering, he was a kid in India who couldn’t stop thinking about airplanes. He wanted to understand how they worked, talk with the people who flew them, and eventually become a pilot himself. “I just love airplanes so much,” Vinit said.
That fascination followed him when his parents brought him to Utah in May 2015. He was 11, an only child leaving the country where he had grown up for a place where his family already had relatives. Along with the possibilities ahead came the immediate challenge of finding a school where he felt comfortable being himself. Eventually, he found NUAMES, where his interest in engineering could grow alongside something equally important: a sense of belonging.Finding His People
Vinit knew a traditional public school environment wasn’t what he wanted. An earlier experience at a charter school had shown him how much he appreciated smaller classes, caring teachers, and a school community where he felt comfortable. NUAMES offered those possibilities, along with an opportunity to earn college credit and explore the STEM subjects he already loved.
What stayed with him about NUAMES, however, went well beyond the classes. “You could be as different as you want, and you would still fit into that environment,” he said.Vinit remembers classmates with different interests and different ways of seeing the world. Some loved cars, while others were drawn to aerospace, accounting, or nursing. Students could pursue what interested them and still feel part of the same community.
He also remembers classmates making an effort to include students who were having a hard time finding their place. The students helped create that sense of belonging for one another, and for a young person who had moved across the world, it mattered. “Never had any issues with any racist comments or racism, any discriminatory issues. None of that,” Vinit said. “So that tells you how good of a place it was.”Those relationships have lasted beyond high school. Just before his interview for this story, Vinit texted a friend who served as student body president at NUAMES. Thinking about the school had reminded him of the people he wanted to stay connected with.
Someone Who Kept Showing Up
When Vinit thinks about the adults who helped him, he remembers conversations with teacher McKay Olson and encouragement from his physical education teacher, Miss Brenda Casper. She noticed when he was having a difficult day and offered words that stayed with him throughout school:
“Don't give up. You've got it. You've got it.”
Her encouragement carried particular weight because Vinit could see that she was facing difficult circumstances herself. He remembers her undergoing cancer treatment and continuing to show up for her students, including one occasion when the class was going bowling. Despite everything she was dealing with, she arrived wearing a mask and drove the bus to take them.Casper has since fully recovered and now serves as principal of NUAMES Davis.
Vinit still remembers her smile and the effort she made to be there. Students learn lessons not only from what a teacher explains, but also from how that teacher lives. For Vinit, Miss Casper’s willingness to keep showing up gave him an example he could carry into his own difficult moments.
Learning He Could Do It
NUAMES also challenged Vinit to become comfortable with things he hadn’t expected to enjoy. Coding was one of them. “I learned coding, which I totally hated and never knew how to do,” he said. With practice, he began to see that he could do it, even if it hadn’t come naturally at first.
Design software opened another door. Programs that were unfamiliar when he entered high school became tools he would eventually use professionally. Today, Vinit works 32 hours a week in a co-op position at Dennis Group while continuing his mechanical engineering studies at Weber State University. As a production system designer, he helps design food manufacturing plants, including planning process piping and making sure it fits without interfering with other equipment.
The work requires attention to detail and an understanding of how individual parts fit into a larger system. At NUAMES, Vinit learned to use Inventor and Revit, design software that helps engineers create 3D models of equipment, buildings and the systems inside them. He now uses those same programs professionally, applying skills he first developed in high school to projects with real consequences.That preparation extended beyond learning the software. Vinit graduated from NUAMES with 57 college credits and experience managing the freedom and responsibility of college classes. By the time he entered university life, he already understood many of its expectations and felt comfortable navigating them.
Still Looking Up
Through it all, Vinit’s childhood dream has stayed with him. For years, he believed wearing glasses meant becoming a pilot was out of reach, but he later learned that the possibility was still open. At the time of his interview, he was completing book training toward a private pilot license while finishing his engineering degree. He still builds rockets for fun and hopes to put his engineering education to work in aerospace, continuing to pursue the fascination that began when he was a child in India.