By Tracy F. Lightfoot
Brent Hurst is almost an ordinary college student. Almost.
A fifth-year Speed School student who is finishing his master’s in Industrial Engineering, Hurst is undoubtedly a good student. Top of his class, in fact. He’s doing pretty well in his second major, too. That’s because Industrial Engineering is Hurst’s fall-back plan in case something goes wrong with his first career choice – dentistry.
Hurst, who is carrying a 3.94 GPA while double-majoring in Industrial Engineering and pre-medicine, has plenty to be proud of academically. But now he has one more credit to add to the list. As if his double-major wasn’t time-consuming enough, Hurst is also president of the University of Louisville’s SAE chapter – the same chapter that just finished in the top five chapters for the Zeal Award, given to the best chapters nationally. Not bad for a six-year-old chapter.
Hurst brought home the Gentleman of the Year award, SAE’s top honor for graduate students.
“I was just as shocked as anyone else when I found out I had won,” he said.
The award recognizes achievement in academics, chapter involvement, community involvement, university involvement and leadership.
Hurst had applied the previous year and was not selected for the award.
“The first time I applied, I pretty much threw together my resume very quickly,” he said.
However, his achievements over the past year encouraged him to apply again, along with the support of two national advisers, both who recommended him for the award after visiting the chapter.
When he put together his application packet this year, he took the time to include his goals and other comments to better explain himself. Condensing his life to an application packet for an award took 12 pages.
“He’s an ambitious guy,” said Dr. Terry Singer, dean of the Kent School of Social Work and SAE faculty adviser. He added that he himself has been “inspired” by Hurst. Singer said Hurst “epitomizes the True Gentleman Initiative.”
The TGI is a national SAE program, only recently implemented by the U of L chapter. The program sets 12 core areas in which the fraternity should seek to achieve success, Hurst said.
But that’s not all there is to say about Hurst. He is also a member of nine on-campus honor societies.
“It’s all about time management,” he explained. The duPont Manual graduate decided as a Speed School sophomore that he wanted to pursue medicine, but he also wanted to keep engineering as a fall-back plan. So he did both. It was just six months ago that he decided to enter dentistry because he said he felt it better suits his nature. He begins dental school in July – at U of L, of course.
In the meantime, Hurst will keep himself occupied with the various on- and off-campus activities he’s involved in, including juggling for children at Kosair Children’s Hospital and baby-sitting children once a month so their mothers can work on their college degrees. For the latter, Hurst helped organize the Project Women program for SAE and Mortar Board.
He described it as an organization that “assists homeless single mothers on welfare to obtain a college education, housing and support services.” He has racked up 600 community service hours at U of L in the process of all this.
So, what makes Hurst so special?
“He puts in a lot of effort – he’s a really hard worker,” said his twin brother Brian. Brian also is an Industrial Engineering major.
Both brothers agreed that some of their drive comes from being twins and competing throughout childhood.
“My competitive drive can be traced to the athletic feuds I would have in the backyard with [Brian],” Brent said.
According to Brian, the two competed in nearly everything, not just athletics – which Brian said are the competitions he usually won. But when it comes to GPA, community involvement and “other awards,” Brian confessed his brother usually wins.
“I’m really proud of him. It’s such an accomplishment,” Brian said about his brother’s Gentleman of the Year award.
And although Brent himself didn’t expect to win, his brother summed up the feelings of everyone who knows Brent Hurst:
“I’m not surprised.”
