Campus mourns death of student

Engineering junior Horacio Moldonado Rojas died earlier this month after struggling with lung cancer since January. Rojas, a native of Mexico City, Mexico, was an Electrical Engineering major and had been active in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the Penn Wharton Mexican Students Association and the Association Internationale Des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales, according to Engineering Vice Dean John Keenan. Associate Engineering Professor Jorge Santiago-Aviles, who taught Rojas in a class on semiconductor physics last year, said he was quiet, yet well-liked by his peers. "I felt that it was extremely unfortunate, not only that he was a promising young man, but because I think he makes a tremendous role model for all the young Latino students at Penn," Santiago said. "He was the no-nonsense guy that worked consistently and knows how to put a group together and work in a group." He added that Rojas and two other Latino students in his class were very close, and hoped to open up a software business in Mexico someday. "He was very important in keeping that group of three very closely knit and working very efficiently," Santiago said. Cora Ingrum, director of the Engineering minority program and advisor of the Society of Professional Hispanic Engineers, said Rojas was "shy," but "friendly." Santiago said although Rojas was shy, he was not introverted. "I like him in particular because even when he was shy, he was the one that invested every day in saying hello," he said. Rojas first became ill at the beginning of this semester. About two weeks after first seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with cancer. Santiago said Rojas had been active up until the week before his death, writing letters and cards, in both Spanish and English. "When I got the call that Horacio died, I was very touched," Santiago said. "It is very unfortunate." Santiago said Rojas' greatest accomplishment was his effort to keep Latino students in the Engineering School informed. "He was considered in the group to be somewhat of a student leader in his own right, a low-key student leader," he said. "[Rojas] was very able in keeping the group of Latino students in the School of Engineering loosely bound together -- which is an effort considering our Latino population at Penn is relatively heterogenous. "He was himself all the time, in the way that he could be very friendly and very shy at the same time," he added. About 50 students gathered last Friday to pay their respects to Rojas at a Mass in his memory. He will be buried in Mexico.

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