At the University of Arizona's Commencement on Friday, many graduates will mark their big day with gratitude, relief and probably some newfound confidence.

For Den Baseda, who will earn his Master of Science in biomedical engineering from the University of Arizona College of Engineering, Commencement marks the end of an unprecedented two-year period of selfishness – a break from a life driven by kindness and dedicated to volunteerism – to focus on earning his degree.

"I've always put other people first," said Baseda, who has made community service and volunteerism a focus of his life since he was a teenager. It's taken him from Habitat for Humanity homebuilding sites with his family in North Carolina to a two-year mission for the U.S. Peace Corps in Namibia.

"But sometimes in order to help other people, you have to put yourself first," added Baseda, who is now 38. Graduate school was the first major life decision he made for only himself.

Baseda is playing the long game though – and still with service to others in mind. Baseda, who was diagnosed with polio at 2 and learned to walk as a teenager, plans to put his new biomedical engineering degree to use designing a device that will help him walk independently for years to come. Baseda said the device will help him continue volunteering as he ages. 

"We all need help in life," he said. "Hopefully I can be that hand."

Early years

Baseda was born in Kon Tum, Vietnam, one of four brothers and four sisters each about three years apart. His parents descend from separate Indigenous communities in Vietnam. His mother, Cha, belongs to the Sedang people, and his father, Wemmy, belongs to the Banhar people.

The first several years of Baseda's life were spent in a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City with his father. His parents later moved him to an orphanage, where life was more suitable for Baseda than in the villages where his parents lived. His siblings also lived in separate orphanages.

When Baseda was 13, his parents applied to a program to resettle their 10-person family in the U.S. They moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Baseda arrived toward the end of fifth grade and struggled to learn English. He worked hard in after-school programs and spent hours listening and relistening to Michael Bolton, the Backstreet Boys and Boyz II Men on CD, trying to accurately transcribe the lyrics to their ballads. It was one of Baseda's earliest experiences with music, and he still enjoys singing.

When Baseda was 15, his parents learned about the Greenville, South Carolina, location for Shriners Hospitals for Children. Up until then, they had carried him on their backs when necessary. Baseda began going to Greenville for regular treatment, eventually learning to walk with crutches. 

Finding purpose in serving others

Baseda became involved in community service and volunteerism when he was just a kid, while his parents were exploring how to receive a Habitat for Humanity house for their family. After learning that they needed to participate in volunteer service before seeking sponsorship for a house, the entire family began regularly attending Habitat events in Matthews, North Carolina.

Baseda spent years going to build sites on the weekends. At some point, when Baseda was in his early teens, it clicked: This was volunteer work; community service. He joined his high school's Habitat for Humanity student chapter and eventually moved with his family into a Habitat house completed in 2001.

"Being able to see my parents and my siblings working hard, and then to see all these strangers helping us – that's what got me to go, 'When I get a little bit older, if I can help, I'm going to help,'" Baseda said. "That ignited my whole volunteering journey."

Baseda earned his Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering from North Carolina State University in 2013, choosing that major to help lay the groundwork for his plans to build his mobility device. Volunteering, of course, remained central to his undergraduate years. He organized spring break community service trips with his classmates and also volunteered at children's summer camps.

"The more I volunteered, the more I wanted to do it," he said. "Any opportunity I can find, I'll do it. For me to not do it is really hard."

After college, Baseda set out to find the next step in his journey of service, something with global impact. He was willing to go anywhere.

'Part of the community'

Baseda arrived in Khorixas, a town of about 9,000 in northwest Namibia, in 2014, eager to start as a volunteer for the U.S. Peace Corps.

With his background in engineering, Baseda was assigned to teach math and science to kids in fourth through seventh grade. He lived in the boys' block of the hostel where the school's roughly 800 students all lived.

On a typical day, Baseda would rise at 5 a.m. to get the kids ready for breakfast before a day of morning lectures, afternoon study sessions and after-school soccer practice. Baseda, on top of his teaching duties, also coached two girls soccer teams. After dinner, grading and everything else, his day typically ended around 11 p.m.

The days were long, but it was the only way he could truly live up to his own mission of service, he said.

"For me, it was not about just helping. It was about, how can I integrate myself into the community, how can I be part of this community," he said, adding that he sought out opportunities from Day 1 in Khorixas to meet the locals and be a familiar face in town. 

"It's not about me, it's about we," he added. "If we can do everything together, then we can all prosper."

Baseda served in Khorixas for 2 1/2 years, requesting an extension to get a few more months than the typical Peace Corps contract.

In 2016, he returned to North Carolina and again turned to service. He found a role with AmeriCorps in Charlotte, supporting newly settled refugee families as a refugee youth program assistant. 

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Putting good into the world

In 2023, Baseda earned a prestigious Peace Corps Coverdell fellowship to attend graduate school. He looked for schools with good engineering programs and plenty of volunteer opportunities. He picked the U of A – partly because Tucson's climate reminded him of Khorixas – and began that in 2023.

It was another act of kindness that led him to pursue a new activity: adaptive athletics.

After learning that someone had stolen his neighbor's handcycle, an adaptive bike powered by the arms and hands, Baseda reached out to see if he could help.

The serendipitous encounter led him to meet a fellow student who told Baseda about the U of A's renowned Disability Resource Center and Adaptive Athletics program.

"There's that saying, 'If you put good into the world, good will come right back,'" Baseda said. "I felt like that's what it was."

Before long, Baseda was getting fit for his first wheelchair and learning to play wheelchair tennis. He now has two national tournaments under his belt, just a year and a half into his wheelchair tennis career. One of them was a title win: the Flight C singles title at last year's Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Wheelchair Tennis Championships.

"Win or lose, I always have fun playing tennis," he said. "It's sort of my happy place – the problems off the court are off the court."

Academically, Baseda stayed focused on building the skills and knowledge to design a device that can keep him walking for many more years. 

As a graduate assistant in a lab in the College of Medicine – Tucson's Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Baseda worked with ultrasound devices to study how arthritis and other conditions change muscles as they age. His time in that lab marked his first chance to look at the muscles in his own body, seeing how his polio made one side of his body weaker than the other. 

In his current lab in the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, Baseda has spent most of this semester with his colleagues working on a skin pigmentation imaging device. 

His future plans include applying for jobs. He also wants to keep playing tennis competitively and is exploring ways to stay on the court.

But no matter where he goes, Baseda said, he will always make time to volunteer.

"That's something I always want to be a part of my life," he said. "I always want to integrate myself into the community and be able to help any way that I can."