Devin Gaines is any university’s ideal candidate. An overachiever in the utmost sense of the word, the 22-year-old has earned five degrees in five years —all as an undergraduate student at the University of Connecticut.
The Stamford, Conn. native says he loves to merge technical and creative elements, which probably explains his diverse areas of study. He graduated May 6 with bachelor’s degrees in computer science, theater studies, cognitive science and linguistic psychology. His final degree is in an individualized major: cinema, culture and cognition.
To achieve the five degrees in the time it usually takes to earn one, Gaines earned an average 21-24 credits per semester but racked up 38 credits one semester in particular. The very organized student created an agenda of priorities, what order he needed to do them in and how much time he would dedicate to each project. To assist with the cost of his education, he was the recipient of a leadership scholarship from UConn and a scholarship from the Jackie Robinson Foundation.
But how did he manage studying for such divergent disciplines?
“That was always an adventure in itself,” Gaines says, but adding, “I was sincerely interested in each subject I was pursuing. When I went into computer science, I really loved it, but I wanted to apply it to different fields. It motivated me to go into different fields, such as theater, linguistics and film to learn and apply my knowledge of computer science within.”
Gaines says he became dedicated to education when he was a child after joining a local community center, the Yerwood Center in Stamford, and meeting a mentor who inspired him to achieve. “My father brought home a broken computer, and I was able to put it together. When he saw that I did that, he decided to take me to a community center. [There], I met up with a woman who became my inspiration in life.”
