Alain Mangiat tried to teach Stepan Dinis how to play baseball.

Dinis, a senior computer science major at Syracuse University, was born in Ukraine in 1988 and moved to the United States in 1992. Mangiat, also a senior computer science major, tried to teach his friend some aspects of American culture, he said.

‘I was teaching him how to throw a curveball, and he ended up throwing it through the ventilation thing in my apartment,’ Mangiat said.

Mangiat said that Dinis’ ethnicity was part of what made him an interesting friend.

Dinis died in his sleep of an undetected heart condition at his home in Camillus, N.Y., Dec. 18.

Friends described Dinis as extremely dedicated to his work. Sheldon Thomas, a senior computer science major, recalled that no matter what, Dinis got his work done.

Thomas said he and Dinis had to build a robot out of Legos and program it during their freshman year. In order to finish the project for their introductory programming class on time, the two stayed up for five straight nights.

‘I distinctly remember being like, ‘Wow, this is really fun. This is really cool that I had met someone else that was dedicated,” Thomas said.

Thomas said Dinis was unique in that he combined studiousness with being personable. He said he will always remember the long nights the two spent together working on projects.

Dinis’ dedication translated to helping his family, as well. His brother, Roman, 26, said he was always there to help his family members. Roman said he remembered when he sold his car to someone in Ithaca and Stepan drove out to pick him up.

‘Whatever he was doing, he’d drop things and help everybody out,’ Roman said. ‘He’d pick me up. He was always there. It didn’t matter if he was working on projects for school, he drop it and come back to it.’

Outside of school, Stepan was actively involved in his church, the First Ukrainian Pentecostal Church. He attended youth services every Thursday and was a member of the youth group. He also participated in a Syracuse indoor soccer team. But his passion was computer programming, which he did for fun as well as for class, Roman said.

Faculty in the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science took notice of Stepan’s dedication to and love for computer science.

Can Isik, the associate dean of L.C. Smith, said Stepan was a great student who professors loved. He already had a job lined up at JP Morgan Chase for after he graduated, Isik said.

‘The computer science program was his passion, but he was multidimensional,’ Isik said.

Stepan would go out of his way to help his friends and classmates on homework and problems, said Mangiat, his friend. Mangiat said Stepan was almost like a teacher’s assistant in the way he supported his peers.

‘If it was a holiday, and he was with his family, and I was online being like, ‘Hey Steve, can you help me out with this problem?’ He would go online and start IM’ing me with ‘This is the solution. Here is what you need to do for this,” Mangiat said. ‘Half of the class would fail if it wasn’t for Steve.’

Part of that multidimensionality was his love of music. Stepan played guitar and had recently learned piano for a music theory class he took as an elective, Mangiat said.

Stepan and Mangiat often played guitar together. Mangiat said he tried teaching some playing techniques to Stepan.

‘He was learning pretty fast,’ Mangiat said. ‘Before you know it, he definitely would have been as good as I was.’

The Thursday before Stepan’s death, Dec. 17, he and Mangiat were taking a final together. Mangiat wanted to show Stepan a final project for another class, but Mangiat finished the test before Stepan and did not wait, thinking he would be in class on Friday. Now, Mangiat said, he will never get the chance.

‘It’s not just me that will miss him,’ Mangiat said. ‘The one thing that should be stressed is how generous Steve is. He never asked for anything in return. He would always give everything to everyone else. He helped so many people. I don’t think anyone had anything against Steve.’

rhkheel@syr.edu

Published on January 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm