When Robert Valley Sr. entered the doors of Castleman in 1946, he did not know that he was starting a legacy. Now \u2013 almost 70 years later \u2013 three members of the family have walked through those doors and graduated in 1950, 1978 and 1981. And another generation is expected to graduate in May of 2016.<\/p>\n
This is one of the Legacy Families that the School of Engineering is trying to find and chronicle\u00a0 \u2013 families that return to UConn\u2019s School of Engineering and consider it home. (Contact information below.)<\/p>\n
For Robert Sr., engineering seemed natural. He had always wanted to be an engineer.\u00a0 \u201cEarly on, I got into ham radios,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u00a0 was fascinating to have a piece of block and a coil and some headphones and tune into your local radio station.\u201d Those days of tinkering were a great time for people with an engineering bent. But today\u2019s devices are too complex, said the Branford resident. \u201cYou can\u2019t even take them apart and understand what\u2019s inside. The circuitry is not accessible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
His son, Robert Valley Jr., chief engineer with Branford-based Analytica, recently acquired by PerkinElmer, felt the same affinity for Engineering. \u201cIt just seemed to be the appropriate path,\u201d said the man who started his own business at age 15. Bob Jr. created \u201cRapid Robert\u2019s Repair Services,\u201d during a summer vacation to fix tape recorders for SoundScriber Corp., then his father\u2019s company. From there, the path was natural. Bob Jr. graduated from UConn with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1978 without even discussing it with his father, the men said.<\/p>\n
The legacy does not stop there. Robert Sr.\u2019s daughter Diane met her future husband Stephen Mierz here at UConn. He graduated in 1981 with a Mechanical Engineering and Materials Engineering degree. Steve caught the engineering bug from his father, who did engineering work, but did not have a degree. His father encouraged Steve to pursue his degree so that he would have more career options.<\/p>\n
Taking his father\u2019s advice, he attended Engineering career fairs and met with Sikorsky, where he has worked ever since. He now handles forensic engineering, inspecting brakes, wheels and other parts that have failed, and figures out how each failure occurred. \u201cAt the end of the day, to be contributing to something that makes the company more successful, that\u2019s a good feeling,\u201d he said. \u201cMoney\u2019s good, but I think you need to have job satisfaction that makes every day interesting and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve\u2019s worn a lot of different hats at Sikorsky, and advises his son and other UConn Engineering students to be adventurous and flexible. \u201cBe open to things at whatever company you go to,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t decide that you\u2019re going to do just one thing. Be open to possibilities. There is a lot of neat stuff that you can do, especially if you go to a big company.\u201d<\/p>\n
His son, Matt Mierz, who\u2019s carrying on the family legacy at UConn, is scheduled to graduate next year with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Matt said he and the elder engineers in his family will occasionally talk about how the field has changed, and how much the UConn Engineering School has expanded. His interest in engineering includes cars and motorcycles. \u201cI went into it because I enjoyed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UConn School of Engineering is proud of the families making engineering a part of their family tradition.\u00a0 Alumni and students who are the children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents or siblings of School of Engineering graduates are legacies.\u00a0 Please keep in touch with your School and confirm your legacy status with the Director of Engineering Alumni Relations, Heidi Douglas (hdouglas@engineer.uconn.edu<\/a>).\u00a0 We hope to hear from you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Robert Valley Sr. began studying Engineering at UConn nearly 70 years ago; he has since been followed by his son, son-in-law and, now, his grandson <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":21155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-203765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 02:17:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222077,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203765\/revisions\/222077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203765"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203765"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}