Lehigh University Athletics
Where are they now? - Rochelle Healea '03
3/25/2009 12:00:00 AM | Athletics, Volleyball
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For Rochelle Healea, Lehigh was a time in which she found love on and off of the volleyball court. A dominating outside hitter for the Lehigh Volleyball Team, Rochelle spent her tenure at Lehigh fostering a love for volleyball, a Chemical Engineering major, and with her future husband, Patrick Sheridan.
Rochelle and Patrick met at Lehigh and currently have a one-month-old daughter named Gabrielle.
Rochelle also spent time participating in Lehigh’s CESAR program. CESAR offers undergraduate science majors at Lehigh University a unique opportunity to obtain firsthand research experience under the supervision of a retired industrial scientist.
“I learned a lot and would recommend that program to chemistry majors or chemical engineering majors,” Rochelle said. “I also had a lot of fun hanging out and participating in activities in my husband’s fraternity, Psi Upsilon.”
Since graduating from Lehigh in 2003, Rochelle has spent time traveling to Italy with her husband as well as beginning her life after college career path. Using her Chemical Engineering degree from Lehigh, Rochelle started off with a four-year employment at Sunoco Chemicals, before arriving at her current employer Siemens Energy.
While at Siemens, she obtained her Project Management Professional certification, giving her the ability to manage projects by creating and managing schedules, budgets, execution and personnel.
The two-phased projects Rochelle manages start with an analysis of refinery and chemical plant overpressure protection and conclude with a trouble shooting process that deals with code violations that cause equipment not to be protected in an overpressure scenario.
After gaining first hand experience in the chemical engineering industry Rochelle would like to offer advice to the Lehigh students pursing a degree in that area.
“A Lehigh Chemical Engineering degree is respected in the oil and gas industry. Lehigh is one of those schools that jumps out at an interviewer and causes the interviewer to be comfortable with the applicants technical ability before the interview even begins.”
Healea was a four-time all-league selection at Lehigh, earning Rookie of the Year and Second Team honors in 1999, along with First Team honors in 2000 and 2001. She is also Lehigh’s all-time kills leader, with a career total of 1,417. Her name also appears 16 separate times in the Mountain Hawks’ record book.
Despite all of these impressive statistics, Rochelle still says that her most memorable Lehigh Athletics moment was a game that resulted in a loss.
“My most memorable moment is playing American University in the league championship match my senior year for a spot in the NCAA tournament. We lost the match but it was pretty awesome knowing that we came really close to playing in the NCAA tournament and beating American.”
Rochelle, a very accomplished student-athlete at Lehigh preaches dedication to the current Lehigh population.
“To the student athletes I would say hang in there. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t have the degree that you desire and be the caliber of athlete that you want to be. What is tough freshmen year and feels like a deal breaker will seem like a breeze sophomore year.”
Rochelle attributes her athletic success to her tremendously athletic family.
“My family is full of athletes. My Dad, Ric Healea, played football at Mounthood Community College where he was a guard and middle linebacker, and Ryan Healea at Eastern Washington University where he played Defensive End, Outside Linebacker, and Defensive Tackle. My grandma, Dolly Healea, was a semi-pro softball player and my grandfather, Oscar Healea was in the rodeo for 35 years. Both my uncle Randy Healea and Dad were high school All-Americans in both football and baseball.”
Written by Ryan Sheehy ‘09
