While working toward a Navy career, Dorian Quimby (26) found that the engineering courses at PLNU prepared him well for officer training
“I spent five years at Point Loma and graduated in the class of 2026,” Quimby said. “I was a computer engineering major and a mathematics and naval science minor. So the naval science part wasn’t through Point Loma. I’m in the Navy ROTC program, and with that, we take classes across at a different campus at San Diego State and USD.”
Quimby has wanted to be a naval officer for as long as he can remember. When thinking about his post-high school plans, he knew either the Naval Academy or Navy ROTC could be good options, which led him to PLNU thanks to a scholarship.
“I saw [PLNU] on a list of schools that had the ROTC scholarship available,” Quimby explained. “I had heard about Point Loma from some family friends who went there back in the day. I fish, and my dad’s a fisherman, and so we always saw the campus from the ocean. I didn’t really know too much about it, other than it was a Christian school down in San Diego, so I toured it my senior year and really liked it — I had a great experience with the admissions department, and they made me feel super welcome.”
Quimby had wanted to go to a school in San Diego, and was trying to decide between USD and PLNU when the offerings PLNU had finally won out. In particular, Quimby has found the collaboration between the engineering department and his ROTC program to be seamless.
“One of the reasons why is that there’s a lot of engineering majors in the program,” he said. “Because the Navy wants people with technical backgrounds. That’s one of the reasons why I chose engineering in high school, even though I was more of a reader. What I had was the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps national scholarship. Point Loma is part of the San Diego unit, and so with that, it was really seamless.”
Based on the scholarship and his goals of becoming a naval officer, Quimby chose the major that would best prepare him.
In another situation, he “probably would have chosen political science, especially [if I picked] my major in high school — I really liked rhetoric and politics and reading, but ended up choosing to go the engineering route, and I’m really glad I did.”
The education he received at PLNU over his five years exceeded his expectations.
“Point Loma just has a great [engineering] program with a lot of profs who really care, and made me passionate about what I was learning,” Quimby said. “I had a cool experience. And everything that we do as a Navy ROTC midshipman is located off campus. So our host university, the University of San Diego, has an office, and that’s where we do pretty much everything, aside from working out. It’s really nice that I get to live my normal Point Loma life and go to classes and enjoy the normal experience on campus [while doing ROTC].”
Part of the campus experience included living in the dorms the entire time he was at PLNU, including his freshman year, fresh out of boot camp.
“I showed up to NSO, actually right after I did the [initiation] and that was at Camp Pendleton,” Quimby said. “I showed up with a shaved head, and my roommate and I hit it off, and then he was my best friend for as long as he went to Point Loma. He graduated early, but we lived in Young, and then Flex, and then Wiley, and then I lived in Wiley this past year. So I lived on campus all five years. It was really great. I fell in love with the community and met so many great people. I have nothing but great things to say about my time at Point Loma.”
Quimby also met great people in the engineering department and formed strong relationships due to the smaller class sizes.
“It feels like a family because there’s the physics and engineering side [of the department], so we’re kind of split into two departments — but it’s really one department. It’s the same faculty. I love school. I’m kind of weird [in that] I really like classes…I fell in love with doing a technical major and learning a bunch of really cool things.”
Quimby particularly loved the way that the math and science of an engineering degree is layered.
“There’s stuff you don’t even know you don’t know,” he laughed. “I had to take three classes to understand the math, and then the science, and then you can get to like the applied engineering stuff. My major, computer engineering, is a hybrid between electrical engineering and computer science, so I think I’m the second computer engineering major to graduate from Point Loma. I got to take half my classes with engineering people, and then half my classes with the computer science folks, so it was a pretty cool hybrid.”
That degree is already supporting his Navy career. The Navy wants to commission officers in surface, submarine, and air warfare, and needs people with technical backgrounds to fulfill those roles.
“I got picked to join the Navy nuclear program,” Quimby said, “so I’m going to be a submarine officer, which means that I have to learn all about the nuclear reactor that propels every submarine. I’m about to leave for Charleston, South Carolina, where I’m going to nuclear power school and learning everything from the basic chemistry and physics of atoms and harnessing fission to the reactor plant systems. I’ll be learning everything I need to know to be an engineering officer on a submarine. Not everyone wants to be on a submarine, but I always thought it was cool.”
While some people can get claustrophobic on a submarine, Quimby thinks they are endlessly fascinating and can’t wait to get started.
“My technical background from PLNU is gonna take me a long way,” he said. “The one thing I can say about our engineering department is that the professors do really care. Taking math there made me fall in love with math — that’s why I added a math minor. I know so many students who are engineering majors at other universities around the country, and I’m sure there are good profs around, but there’s not a concentration of people who are really loving and caring and Christian, and just really looking out for their students like at Point Loma.”
