Northeastern graduate Collins Okara helps cultivate community among Roux international students

When Chinemeremma “Collins” Okara got off the plane in Portland, Maine in September of 2022, his surroundings were so foreign to him he said, “it was like landing on the moon.” He didn’t know a single soul, he hadn’t yet secured permanent housing, and he had no idea what was in store for his future.

Okara’s arrival in Maine was the first of several pioneering moments for him over the next two years. Not only was it his first time outside the continent of Africa, but his acceptance at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute also made him one of the first international students to enroll at the campus, and he’d go on to have a long list of “firsts.”

Okara, who grew up in Nigeria and earned his engineering undergraduate degree at All Nations University in Ghana, started thinking about earning a graduate degree while working as an IT network engineer in his home country. He felt that, with an advanced degree, he could do more with his career. He started researching graduate schools in the United States, where he felt the engineering programs were the most prestigious. When he was accepted to Northeastern University, they had a compelling offer: their brand-new campus in Maine was not only accepting international students, but was offering generous scholarships to qualifying incoming students through their Alfond Scholars Initiative. That scholarship, paired with a College of Engineering Dean’s Scholarship, made it possible for him to pursue the opportunity.

So, he took the plunge, and the next thing he knew, he was disembarking an airplane in a place he knew almost nothing about. The adjustment from life in Nigeria to life in Maine was a little jarring, he admitted.

“I quickly came to understand that Maine was one of the places in the United States that experiences extreme cold,” he said. “I had never seen snow before. The first time it snowed, I had to go outside to touch it, to see what it felt like.”

Aside from the extreme weather, Okara said there were other cultural and life adjustments to get used to as he settled into life as a full-time electrical and computer engineering master’s student. In Ghana, the programs were less applied and more theoretical, and the professors weren’t as accessible to students.

“In Africa, you don’t really access your professors as the way you do here,” he explained. “But I realized at the Roux Institute, you could actually approach your professor and build a relationship with them.”

Okara appreciated the small classes and community at the Roux Institute that allowed him to better get to know his classmates who came from different backgrounds and experiences. He enjoyed his classes, and became particularly involved in robotics, working with the Roux Institute’s Director of Engineering Research, Jack Lesko, in his robotics lab. There, he worked with a robotic arm, programming it to move in certain ways and perform basic tasks. It was in this lab that he learned advanced programming skills, which he now hopes to transfer to a career in embedded software engineering.

“The experience I had here with robotics is very transferrable to what I hope to do in my career,” Okara said. “Programming robots is a mix of hardware and software, and it taught me a lot about hardware programming. As an embedded systems engineer, I want to program components in gadgets and technologies like smart watches and smart TVs.”

When he wasn’t studying or working in the lab, Okara was busy getting involved in Roux campus life. Most notably, he was a founding member of the Roux’s African Student Association (RASA). Okara knows as well as anyone the culture shock that comes with relocating to a country halfway around the world, and he uses his own experience to help other African students who have since enrolled at the Roux Institute.

“We help incoming students adjust to the culture and weather, try to set them up with internships and co-ops, help them find on-campus jobs, and connect them with local non-profit groups that provide guidance and resources to immigrants in Maine,” Okara said.

The group also promotes and shares their culture with the rest of the Roux community, holding events like Africa Week, which celebrates and educates through discussion panels and events like cooking demonstrations, fashion shows, African music and dance, and more.

As Okara prepares to walk in the Roux Institute Commencement this spring, he’s reflecting on his intrepid journey into the unknown, and all the rewards and growth that came with it.

“Coming to study in a new country pushed me outside of my comfort zone,” he says. “Now I have a degree from one of the best schools in the world, I got to build a community on the Roux campus, be a student ambassador for Northeastern University’s College of Engineering, and fully integrate within a system that was so different than what I was used to culturally. It really taught me how to work with and connect with people from different backgrounds.”