2022 Senior Series: Daniel Keating Jr.

Image

“The way I evaluate the many opportunities that I have is I do whatever makes me giggle. You can see that I’m on the board of the surf club – now I can say that I’m on the ‘surf’ ‘board.’” I do things that I think are fun and worthwhile. 

I'm a nontraditional student. I came back to school after a 10-year hiatus. When I got out of high school, I saw a lot of my friends going into college not really knowing what they wanted to do with their lives. And I didn't see it — it just wasn't financially feasible for me to do that. I was interested in fashion at the time. I dropped out of the community college that I was failing in and moved to Boston, worked in the fashion industry, and then moved to New York and did the exact same thing. I retired and decided that I was going to learn how to farm. While I was working on the farm, I was hanging out with a bunch of Romanian guys. After about two-and-a-half to three years of hanging out with these Romanian farmers, I realized that these people work so much harder than anybody that I'd ever met from the United States of America. I asked them, ‘Why do you guys work so much harder than everyone else?’ They said, ‘Daniel, it’s our culture.’ 

‘But what is culture? What is that? Can you define it for me?’ I couldn't get a satisfying definition for what culture was because people just kept giving me lists of things. That's when I decided it was time to go back to college and learn from the people who're writing books about the topic. So I went back to community college at age 28, and did really well. My GPA, which was like a 2.0, turned into a GPA that was good enough to get me into Isenberg.

Before I transferred, my grandfather was a big influence on my deciding to go back to college, and getting scholarships. At my community college with a 2.0 GPA, I was not eligible for a lot of scholarships. I kept telling him I'm going to be eligible for scholarships once I transfer to UMass. I remember sitting on the top of the Campus Center, eating a bowl of pho in fall of 2020. There's nobody on campus, and I opened up my email inbox to see that I received the Nabors Global Business Development scholarship. It was a significant award. My grandfather passed away before I got that scholarship, before I got any of the scholarships actually. When I got it, I don't know, I could just feel him standing there. It was like a gust of wind, and I could feel his hand on my shoulder. We had a great relationship.  

Winning that scholarship is like a really cool intersection of all of the stuff that led up to it: failing out of community college, going into fashion, going into farming, coming back deciding that I wanted to go to college, winning that scholarship, and then what that scholarship enabled me to do. 

It's really cool going back to college as an adult, because now not only do I have the agency and initiative of somebody who's slipped a little bit and really worked at something, but also I know what I want, and know what I'm here for. 

I am getting two degrees on campus: one is in management and the other is in BDIC urban and organization studies. Being a part of BDIC makes me so happy, as it gives people the opportunity to cross over all the requirements that are getting in the way of what they want to do and actually peruse it. 

A professor I bonded with here was Marta Calás, a critical management scholar and management professor in Isenberg. She and I bonded over organizational culture — and go down these rabbit holes of management theories. She has been a great mentor. 

When I came to the University of Massachusetts, as a student of organizational culture, I noticed weird norms around campus regarding making new friends. So I wanted to improve the climate in the university. I am the Isenberg Undergraduate Student Advisory Committee Bus Driver, working in direct collaboration with the dean's office to interface between the dean and the general student body of Isenberg. I get to make a direct impact on Isenberg's climate; we have a new credo that people are going to say in the induction ceremony to the University. It is a set of verbal affective commitments that when recited, or are in the back of somebody's mind, will help to create that environment that it’s OK to talk to strangers. We're all doing the same thing, and we're all interested in similar things. So why don't we just talk to each other about it? Why don't we talk to each other in person? Why don't we make it OK for a complete stranger to sit down and make a group of friends? That's one of the things that has wrapped up my experience as an undergraduate nicely, by finally getting the chance to create a positive norm change.  

After graduation, I will be a board member at the Northern Essex Community College. A part of that responsibility includes me thinking of ways that I can help improve the student experience at the college. I want to become the resource for students there, and help pave the way for these students to get into their top-choice school — and Ivy Leagues are not out of the question, and I know that this is possible."  

Daniel Keating Jr. '22 transferred to UMass from Northern Essex Community College in January 2020, and is pursing two bachelor’s degrees: one in management at the Isenberg School of Management and a Bachelor's Degree with Individual Concentration (BDIC) in urban and organization studies. He is an Isenberg Undergraduate Student Advisory Committee Leader, UMass Surf Club board member, Gilman Scholar, Fulbright Applicant, BDIC Ambassador, PALs (People Against Loneliness) co-founder, UMass Dining Student Ambassador, and twice-featured transfer student success podcast guest and panelist. After graduation, he will be a board member at the Northern Essex Community College Center for Business and Accounting. He is always encouraging others to pursue their goals, and nothing makes him feel more fulfilled than watching his friends and loved ones succeed.