Joriz’s Jump

Spring/Summer 2005

The thing about Joriz De Guzman being the youngest or one of the youngest students ever to attend Cal State San Bernardino — 12 years old when he arrived — is that you’re expected to pump out A’s easy as making toast and to just be smart all of the time. True, this seems a given, given a boy of 12 wouldn’t be in college if he didn’t have oodles going on upstairs. But Joriz doesn’t claim to know it all quite yet and most likely never will. In March, the graduate admissions dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara was searching for something else anyway. The young computer science major’s eight-week research project last summer at UCSB had already proven to the school that Joriz could do the work. “The interview was really to see if I could handle the pressure,” says Joriz of his March meeting. He only turned 15 in May. The interview was scheduled for an hour, but it turned into a four-hour visit with Joriz and his parents, and included a tour of the seaside campus with the head of the computer science program, which is considered one of the world’s best. A few days later the campus extended an invitation for Joriz to attend UCSB.

He’ll make the jump to light speed in August, zipping from his bachelor’s degree in computer science, which he receives from CSUSB in June, past his master’s and straight to Ph.D. work. In August, off he goes, walking and working among doctoral students twice his age and older, a kid becoming a young man, smart enough to know that intellect alone does not make a kid smart. Character development is part of that equation, too. The maxim commonly advanced by stalwart computer scientists and held by Joriz is that the work one does should always contribute something positive to society. It’s the right idea. He carried it around CSUSB as he went about his business. “I loved it here,” he says. Now he takes the idea with him, and Santa Barbara is feeling a little bit smarter.

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