At 25, Matthew Grossman is older than most of his fellow Rice University undergraduates, but then he spent almost five years in the U.S. Army as a cavalry scout.
“It was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I even thought about becoming a Green Beret. I thought that’s where God was leading me,” said Grossman, a junior in mechanical engineering (MECH).
Grossman is grateful for his Army experience, especially for the G.I. Bill which enables him to attend Rice, but his life has taken a detour and he contemplates another sort of career altogether, probably in industry.
Grossman was born in Pearland, near Houston. His father died when he was 16 and his mother, who has remarried, has retired in Killeen, Texas, near Fort Hood. He signed his Army contract in February 2012, graduated from high school the following June and reported to Fort Benning, Ga. in August.
“I figured if someone has to be deployed, it might as well be me. I felt an obligation,” Grossman said.
He underwent One Station Unit Training, in which recruits remain with the same unit for Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training, and was stationed at Fort Hood, where he attended Air Assault School. In 2013 he was selected to join his battalion’s sniper section. He spent nine months in Korea near the DMZ. “We used to say that if North Korea invaded, we were a speed bump,” Grossman said.
“I had never been tremendously happy in the Army. There was a lot of down time. You end up sitting around a lot, waiting to be told what to do,” said Grossman, who graduated with honors from the Rappel Master Course.
In the summer of 2016 he underwent Special Forces Assessment and Selection, which is where he “ultimately realized that God didn’t want me in the Army anymore. He had other plans.”
His Army contract was scheduled to expire in February 2017, and he was discharged in January, in time to enroll at Central Texas College in Killeen. He graduated with honors, maintained a 4.0 GPA and was tied for first place in his class with one other graduating student. He earned his associate degree in engineering last December. At the same time he was working as coordinator at the college’s recreation center.
In 2018, Grossman transferred directly to Rice, retaining most of the credits he had earned at Central Texas. Thus far, among the MECH faculty he’s closest to the lecturer Matthew Elliott, who has sparked his interest in mechanical dynamics.
“I have another reason to be grateful I was in the Army. I wouldn’t otherwise have met my wife,” said Grossman, who married Lauren in August of last year.