Nelly Rosario ‘94 Bridges Science and Writing

Bridges have profoundly affected Nelly Rosario ’94 all her life. "Maybe because I'm a bilingual middle child who grew up near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn and often crossed it on foot, bridges play such a literal and figurative role in my imagination,” she said.

Her career similarly spans the two cultures of engineering and humanities. Although she received her degree in civil and environmental engineering, this academic year she has returned to MIT as a visiting scholar with the Comparative Media Studies and Writing Department.

“Writing was how I distilled what I learned and is a great way to bridge disciplines, people, ideas.” Rosario credits legendary MIT professor Elzbieta (Chodakowska) Ettinger with “pushing me over the edge to make a decision about my focus after MIT. One of the biggest lessons she imparted was to really understand writing as a science and in a serious way.”

After graduation, Rosario returned to New York City and attended writing classes while teaching environmental education at a high school auspiciously called El Puente [The Bridge]. She then enrolled in the graduate writing program at Columbia and realized “it was sort of the inverse of MIT: suddenly none of my engineering background counted in class. But in the second year, I understood that in design, simplicity is always best, and I really tried to bring an elegance to each sentence.” A few years later, she published a critically acclaimed book, Song of the Water Saints. For the last seven years, she has taught creative writing at Texas State University.

Currently Rosario is preparing for her next novel, which concentrates on medicine and anatomy, by visiting MIT libraries, interviewing people, and sitting in on lectures. She notices changes since her own student days including many more women students and faculty and a greater focus on digital thinking, multimedia, new ways of telling stories.

Rosario also serves part-time as writer and researcher for the ongoing Blacks at MIT History Project directed by Clarence Williams, MIT adjunct professor of urban studies, emeritus. “We’re looking at how blacks influenced the Institute and vice versa, collecting oral histories, photographs and data, and analyzing the material within a larger framework and context. We’re thinking about a way to look at history to unfold the future, what that means for the Institute, and how diversity and excellence can work in tandem.”

As a residential scholar in Simmons Hall, Rosario said, "It’s like a trifecta being here: a visiting scholar, working with the Blacks at MIT History Project, and living at Simmons. I get to talk to so many students, and everyone is doing intense work in different fields. I’m literally living in the sponge, soaking it all up."