Biography|RJ Scaringe — The Mechanical Engineering Degree Taken on This Hill

People treat Rivian as a California truck company that appeared in 2018.

The first engineering degree sits on a hill above the Hudson in Troy, New York.

Robert Joseph Scaringe took a bachelor's in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2005.

RPI's own commencement coverage and his later return as speaker both date that undergraduate year.

Twenty years later, on 10 May 2025, he addressed the Class of 2025 on the same campus and received an honorary doctorate in engineering.

The official visitor address is 110 Eighth Street.

Folsom Library stands on College Avenue inside the hill campus.

Forbes and MIT's Mechanical Engineering alumni profile both record the Rensselaer bachelor's before the Cambridge graduate years.

A later interview, summarized by Business Insider, has him saying he finished first in that class.

That ranking is his own later account, not an independent registrar list published here.

Melbourne Central Catholic High School, which lists him as class of 2001, sits 1,200 miles south in Brevard County.

The house he grew up in is not this pin.

What Troy gave him was a first credential in mechanical engineering, taken at an institute built for just that work.

The next four years would be spent in an automotive laboratory in Cambridge.

Photo: Folsom Library at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

Portrait: Richard Truesdell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Los Angeles Auto Show, 27 November 2018).