Dean Trusty, Automotive Engineer and Scholarship Winner

Don’t Take No For An Answer

Dean Trusty grew up facing a challenge foreign to most Americans but familiar to New Yorkers: the struggle for car access.

As a kid in the Bronx, Trusty nursed hopes of becoming someone who gets to try new vehicles before everyone else. However, he was constrained by the borough he calls home.

“Growing up in the city, I didn’t really have access to a garage,” where he might tinker with engines or other car parts. “I can’t really do it at my house or anything. I can’t do it on the side of the street.”

Today, Trusty holds a Master of Science (M.S.) in Automotive Engineering from Clemson University earned with the support of an SAE Doctoral Engineering Scholarship, which he found on Scholarships.com. During his time at Clemson, he interned with the vehicle dynamics steering team for the 2026 Honda Passport, helping Honda test the new SUV model before it went on the market.

“When someone tells you no, that you can’t do it, just keep trying,” Trusty said. “Definitely don’t take no for an answer, take it as a redirection for something else … Pursue what you want to do, because it might lead to something better.”

As a scholarship-funded graduate student, Trusty was able to reduce the amount of loans he had to take out for his master’s. Would he recommend Scholarships.com to students? “Yes, one hundred percent yes.”

Lacking a garage was just the first setback in a journey defined almost as much by disappointment as by success.

In high school, Trusty had his heart set on attending Clemson. The South Carolina public land-grant university is known for pioneering the nation’s first undergraduate and graduate programs in automotive engineering. Clemson’s leafy campus is embedded in the Southeast, a region with a growing auto industry and a rising demand for engineers in the field.

Trusty’s undergraduate application to Clemson was rejected.

“School was very important to me,” he said. With this principle in mind – and an awareness of the cost of college – he applied to multiple colleges and scholarships. He signed up for an account with Scholarships.com, and applied to any awards for which he qualified.

At first, he did not win any.

However, he was offered a place on the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology Automotive Management program at the State University of New York at Farmingdale.

There, he was eligible for in-state tuition. In addition, SUNY offered financial aid covering most of his schooling. It turned out to be the right place at the right time.

“At the time … I would get homesick a lot,” Trusty said. At Farmingdale, he also met two faculty members whose support would become invaluable in the coming years, Gozde Ustuner and Anthony Greco.

Having ruled out covering the car industry as a journalist (he disliked writing) and working in car sales (you don’t need a degree for it), Trusty arrived on campus weighing different pathways into the industry. He discovered that he enjoyed hands-on courses in which he could take an engine apart to see how it worked.

“It was [Ustuner and Greco] who said: ‘I see you doing a lot more than just becoming a mechanic or a service advisor. Why don’t you try engineering?’”

However, switching his major to engineering would require taking additional courses, which could mean not graduating on time. As he neared his May 2021 graduation, Trusty began to consider studying engineering in graduate school. Then came COVID-19.

Graduating into a pandemic tipped the scales in favor of graduate school: “it was hard for me to find a job within the auto industry, so I knew I wanted to go back to school to even my chances.”

But Trusty was wary of taking the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE), a standardized test required to apply for many graduate programs. Then, Clemson followed other universities across the country in waiving its GRE requirement, citing the pandemic as a constraint on accessibility.

“This might be a sign for me to go and pursue engineering for my master’s,” Trusty thought. After speaking with faculty, students, and alumni of the program, he reapplied to Clemson University – for a Master of Science in Engineering.

This time, he got in.

But there was a caveat: the school did not offer him any fellowships.

To turn his unfunded offer into a reality, Trusty decided to defer enrollment and spent the following academic year applying for scholarships, rather than starting graduate study.

He returned to Scholarships.com to find that the site remembered his email address, back from when he had first used it – unsuccessfully – to find scholarships as a high school student.

This time, it worked. Prompted by his clear, niche, and specific project, the site filtered scholarships for which he was eligible and matched him with the SAE Doctoral Engineering Scholarship, which he won.

Although Trusty still had to take out student loans, the scholarship was “a huge help financially.” He enrolled at Clemson with the support of a nationwide engineering mentorship program provided by the scholarship. He also used his new SAE membership to attend conferences across the country, including in auto industry hotspots such as Michigan and the Carolinas.

Trusty emphasizes the importance of building a supportive network of mentors, teachers, and others who can show you which step to take next – and who believe in you when it might be difficult for you to believe in yourself.

Having others who come from similar backgrounds can help; Trusty found it encouraging to hear Greco’s stories of growing up as a kid in the Bronx, like himself.

“When someone tells you no, that you can’t do it, just keep trying,” Trusty said. “Definitely don’t take no for an answer, take it as a redirection for something else … Pursue what you want to do, because it might lead to something better.”

As for using Scholarships.com?

“Apply for as many scholarships as you can, because you never know.”