UCI student receives national honor

Vivek Mehta is given an academic acknowledgment from USA Today, one of 20 in U.S. Four years ago, Vivek Mehta graduated from Orange Lutheran High School and headed off to college, hoping to earn a medical degree and star in a few football games along the way.

By the time his senior year at UC Irvine neared an end, however, he was aiming for a different kind of heroism.

The 21-year-old Orange resident, who this week became the only Californian on USA Today’s All-USA College Academic First Team, found his eyes opened time and again as he worked toward his bachelor’s degree.

During his first quarter at UCI, he began volunteering at the Share Our Selves medical clinic in Costa Mesa; later, he went to Mexico to aid local physicians.

When Mehta traveled to India last year to visit his aunt, who runs a charity organization in a small village, he knew he had found his calling.

“They asked me if I wanted to meet the tribal leader of the small village,” said Mehta, a biochemistry and molecular biology major. “I speak the language, so I was talking with him about life in the village .... While I was talking to him, some people from the village called me over to a hut where a lady had just given birth to twins.

“One had passed away. The other was still alive, and the mother had passed away. I saw that, and it really changed the way I thought about what I wanted in my life. It was one of those instances where everything changed -- my plans, my goals.”

Now, Mehta is a finalist for a Fulbright Fellowship and hopes to return to India and treat children in clinics.

In the meantime, he has another jewel on his resume: On Wednesday, USA Today spotlighted him as one of the top 20 undergraduates in the United States.

For the last 17 years, USA Today has sponsored the competition, in which professors and deans nominate outstanding undergraduates, and a panel of judges selects the winners, who received trophies and $2,500 cash each.

Susan Bryant, dean of the UCI School of Biological Sciences, nominated Vivek.

“Vivek makes all of UCI proud,” Bryant said in a news release. “He excels at everything he does and brings honor and distinction not only to himself but to the UCI campus as well.”

Mehta said his selection came as a shock.

“I thought I had an outside chance at an honorable mention,” he said. “Even looking at the people who are the other first team members, I’m in awe. It’s my honor to be among them.”

At UCI over the last four years, Mehta has also won the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship, a National Institutes of Health summer research fellowship and the UCI 2005 volunteer of the year award. He was named to the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society in his junior year.

At Share Our Selves, a clinic for low-income families around Orange County, Mehta introduced a seminar series known as “Estoy Bien,” which deals with ways of preventing childhood obesity. Ryan Murillo, the clinic’s volunteer coordinator, said Mehta was working with Share Our Selves to plan a health fair at Mater Dei High School in March.

“There’s so many good qualities about Vivek,” Murillo said. “For a volunteer, he’s very down-to-earth and humble, very reliable. He’s here every week.”20060217iusz3wnc(LA)Vivek Mehta