Jonatan Figueroa Montenegro
03:01:30 PM
I want to learn more about biomedical engineering.
Alondra Rodriguez Patino
03:01:42 PM
Electrical engineering with an interest in Renewable energy
Sam Potter
03:01:56 PM
Chemical engineering
Alondra Rodriguez Patino
03:23:05 PM
With that in mind how would it work in the residential halls if I'm transferring from a different college to CSU?
I think it's going to be the order of Camille, Sarah, Kylie, Kate not work for everyone cool alright. Hi everyone, my name is Camille. I am a fifth year now studying chemical and biological and biomedical engineering. I am urgently from Southern California kind of LA area. For those of you who are in California.
My pronouns are she, her and hers, and my favorite memory from first year is, I think it be ram welcome where you got to meet your whole entire Hall and you got to participate in activities with kind of the whole college but also mostly Unipole University.
Yeah, awesome Camille. My name is Sarah. I am a fourth year majoring in biomedical and mechanical engineering here at CSU. My pronouns are she, her, hers and I'm originally from Clayton, CA which is kind of Northern California. So in the Bay Area.
And let's see one of my favorite memories about freshman year at CSU for me is really I got dinner with a lot of different people in my Hall. Just kind of randomly and I met so many people through that and I actually work with every single one of them to this day in all of my classes. So it's just really fun to me, everyone and everyone else is looking for, you know, friends. So it's just a great opportunity.
Hi everyone, my name is Kaylee Ann. My pronouns are she, her and hers. I'm from Honolulu HI and I'm a fourth year majoring in Computer Engineering. My favorite memory from freshman year is probably.
The Rocky Mountain showdown. It's football game between CSU. On our on, our rivalry school CU Boulder Ann. My first year we what we were down in Denver.
And it was a really awesome time just to be at like a really big like sports just because for me. I'm from Hawaii. We don't really have any large sports teams, so it was really exciting for me.
I'm hi everyone, my name is Kate I go by she her hers. I am a third year studying chemical and biological engineering and I am from Boulder and my favorite memory from freshman year is kind of a crazy one. We are the Walter Scott Junior College of engineering and my freshman year. I got to meet Walter Scott Junior himself. He was the past CEO of Q it construction engineer which is largest construction company in North America. So that was pretty Dang cool.
That's awesome, thank you so much for sharing. OK, so I wanted to address our question here about with that in mind about our residential halls and how would it work residential halls wise if you're transferring from a different college. So there's a ton of opportunities actually. So Allison Hall in particular which I know Kylie lived in Allison Hall her first year and has an actual transfer community. So that might be something that you consider as well to connect with other transfer students. 'cause that transfer student experience is a little bit different. I know I came into CSU as a transfer student.
And it was really in that first year for me. I was already a junior and I felt like everybody already knew each other. How do I connect to people? And I kind of wish that I had lived in Allison Hall and had a community of peers to connect with straight away 'cause I had to make all my friends through extracurriculars and classes, which in that first semester definitely was challenging even for a very extroverted person. So there's communities that you can choose to live in on campus, and even if you don't live in academic village, you can still access.
All of those resources we talked about that are associated with the engineering residential learning community as an engineer, your key card will get you into those resources, so you can still get in there. Get access to tutoring, go to those computer labs, go to the different studies faces. So that's a really awesome opportunity. Also, it's worth noting that as a transfer student, you don't have to live on campus, so it's a requirement for first year students. But transfer students are allowed to live off campus, so you might choose to live off campus as well. And that choice is really a personal one to make.
And leads us definitely into a good question, so I want to hear from let's talk to Kate a little bit about living in academic village. And then Kylie. Would you mind sharing a little bit about living in Allison Hall and not living in the academic village and just kind of what? What led you to choose those places to live?
For sure, so I didn? T live in Academic Village Engineering, which is that act in our engineering specific residence Hall on campus my first year and then I actually also lived in Aspen, which is also an academic village is clump. There's little clump of buildings, honors, engineering, and ASP in sort of the first semester of my second year, so I was there three whole semesters. I love Evie. It's really nice spot to live. I would say what made me choose living in Evie would be the engineering specific residence halls means that you, kind of.
Automatically get introduced to 12 to 14 other engineers, whether they are of your major or not. The whole Hall has the same vibe like everyone is going to be doing homework and working together. My area was actually a chemical and biological engineer, same as me, so she was able to help with homework and stuff and beyond just having a lot of Engineers concentrated in one place, I would say the coolest thing about Evie Engineering is that computer lab on the ground floor that Jackie mentioned. It's a hub for first year engineers. There's always going to be somebody down there working on some sort of project, whether it's Matlab.
Or designing reactor or printing their presentation at 3:00 AM. There is always going to be someone down there. There's also touring available down there, and a lot of great resources for the first year engineer.
Cool, so like Jackie had mentioned I did not live in academic village engineering. I lived in Allison Hall. I chose specifically to not live in the engineering residence Hall for a couple of reasons. The first one being I really wanted a separation between my academics and taking a break from my academics. I knew that I would be in class is surrounded by my peers. I would be in steady spaces with them and I would spend majority of my time.
As a college student studying and hanging out with those kind, that cohort of engineering students and so I knew that I wanted to break an I kind of viewed going back to my residence Hall at the end of the day as my break. Kind of like my OK I don't have to look at anymore notes and then I have to study for the rest of the night. Kind of a thing. That being said, I did end up spending a lot of my time on the 1st floor of the engineering residence Hall like Kate was talking about because of all of the resources that they had there.
But, uh, the reason why I chose to live in the engineering residence Hall was because I really wanted to meet new people specifically outside of engineering, like that was something that I went into college wanting was an exposure to a lot of different types of people in a lot of different types of majors, so that's kind of one of the reasons why I also chose not to live in engineering.
Thank you so much for sharing. I appreciate those perspectives 'cause it really is a personal choice of where you want to live. An always know that you will have access to resources for tutoring. Advising computer labs like no matter where you turn like you can access that information and whether you utilized academic village or you go to our different resources on campus like the tilt building which is the Institute for learning and teaching for tutoring. So you'll find access to help and support no matter what. And so now I want to really transition to talking about student involvement and so that's really important to note.
Is that there is still time as an engineer to get involved, so I want to hear from let's talk with Sarah and Camille about your involvement and what you're involved in within the College of engineering and then outside of the College of engineering. And then if you could give some tips and tricks for time management that would be fantastic.
I can go first Camille if you'd like, OK, cool. So like Jackie said, I think all of us are pretty heavily involved and you'll see that a lot of times, specially in our engineering program, a lot of our engineers are pretty motivated to get more involved, but I am involved heavily in Society of women engineers, which is one of our diversity programs in engineering student organizations. So what's really great about sweet little plug is that we really just try to promote women in stem, so a lot of times we have a lot of different events.
That revolve around that goal, so you know one of them is introducing girl to Engineering Day where we actually bring another diversity organizations in other academic or major based organizations, and they actually all hold little events for middle school girls to come and just kind of see what engineering is like. It's not scary. Things like that and we have a lot of resources like that, so I've been involved since my freshman year doing different things, being officers, doing events, stuff like that and something I just really like to say is like this is How I Met.
Everyone that I'm best friends with now is being involved in sweet. I live with people who are in sweet. My best friends are in it like basically everything that I know I've learned from people and sweet. It's just been a really good experience and I've heard that same thing from other people in other organizations as well.
In addition to that, I think it is really awesome to be part of these organizations because a lot of times those organizations have either local or national conferences because they are part of a global organization likes we is so sweet actually holds one of the largest. They hold the largest career fair for women engineers in the world. Thousands of recruiters. It's pretty crazy, so I've actually gotten a lot of my internship offers from that conference and it's just been a great experience to meet different people who may not necessarily, you know.
Know about specifically what CSU does. They may recruit from like University of Illinois instead. So if you go to those conferences and stuff, you can kind of see and meet different recruiters who you don't normally see. Otherwise, it's been a great experience in terms of tips for time, time management.
Cool, I love that tip. Um, yeah. So I I'm going to talk about kind of involvement with student organizations and will talk about involvement with jobs. 'cause I have worked my fair amount of jobs here on campus so student involvement with student organizations. My first year I joined kind of the more general student organizations within the College of engineering. I joined BME S which is the bio medical engineering society. I've not remembering what BM yes these were, but it's basically the Biomedical Engineering Society as well as Aiche.
Which is the American Institute of chemical engineering and necessary that all of our disciplines within the College of engineering have some type of American Society of said major American Society of mechanical engineering. I believe it's IEEE is for electrical engineering, so really joined those because that's a great way to kind of get your foot in the door to kind of meet people within your major kind of. Get that inside. Scoop on what classes take, who professors are, maybe get some free books or so you know for that semester.
Jacqueline Goldring
03:43:05 PM
Here is more information about the Powerhouse: https://energy.colostate.edu/about/the-powerhouse/
And then as I moved on, I was able to. Once I kind of narrow down what I wanted to do with my major, I joined ISP, which is the International Society of pharmaceutical engineering and it really worked my way up to becoming the president of ISP. So that's also a fun thing that you can do is really get those those officer positions and so ISP which which I said is the International Society of pharmaceutical engineering, also holds career fairs specifically for students who are interested in Pharma and biotech. And so these two organizations.
Jacqueline Goldring
03:43:44 PM
Also, here is more info for all the majors in Engineering at CSU: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/future-students/undergraduate/
More so ISP Ian kind of more interest based student organizations are open to everyone on campus. We have not in engineering students but also we have micro bio students. We also have a lot of the Biomedical Sciences students in our in our student organization so really joined those student organizations. One in your major and then the other one kind of in your interest. In addition to that I am also pretty heavily involved in Ram Catholic, which is one of many student organizations for faith and belief.
Jacqueline Goldring
03:44:20 PM
And here is a look inside some of our labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ccTgtNpVis
On campus, so kind of 1 tidbit I have in one hint or not hint wanna advice that I have for students is to join a student organization within your major and then join us doing organization that isn't in your major so that you kind of get the best of both worlds of getting that advice for your major but also relaxing and meeting people outside of your major. Also moving to student organization or student involvement within my jobs I have worked. I believe it's now three jobs on campus. I worked one is a retail student.
In cams lobby shop which is in our Lory Student Center. I also work obviously as a student ambassador and then I recently worked as or recently I'm starting to work as a greater for the physics physics Department, so all these great things. All these great opportunities and that's really just to tell you that if I can work two jobs in one semester you do have a lot of time on for your in your schedule to be able to fill all of these different things and so really just get involved really fine. Things that you're passionate about. Go to these.
You know meetings when they are in person, because usually they will have free pizza, so that's always a good thing to do.
Who can say no to free pizza and professional development, right? It's a win win for everyone. I want to talk about some other opportunities for involvement as well, and things that you can do outside of you know you're at your time at your in your curriculum path. And so Kate, I know you had the opportunity to study abroad. Do you want to talk a little bit about that experience as an engineer? And what went into the planning process? And then what was it like? Boots on the ground?
For sure, so I studied abroad last semester. In the spring I went to Valencia in Spain and it was such a wonderful experience. I know there's a lot of times there's preconceived notion that engineers can't study abroad because there's just not enough time. We have so many classes and it's so rigid and you gotta really stick it out. All four or five years on campus. That is absolutely not the case. When I went, there were eight of us CSU engineers who all went together and seven of us for chemical and biological engineers, funnily enough.
So we all went together, we all made it work and it was a wonderful experience. I would say my number one piece of advice for trying to study abroad as an engineer is just to start early and then the second piece of ice to directly follow that up is talk to your advisor because it is possible. Study abroad but it is also true that there are a lot of classes we engineers have to take that need to be on campus because it'll be specific to your major and only offered by CSU. So an advisor is the best person who's going to know what classes you need to stay on campus for and what classes you can shuffle around so that you can take them.
Abroad other than just how to actually study abroad, I would really recommend it because it is such a great experience for diversifying your engineering portfolio. Alot of times engineering can be pretty narrow and we're taking very hyper specific subjects and hyper specific classes and skill sets. And while those are super important for being responsible, professional engineers, that's not all that's out there does not always what employers are looking for. So education abroad will give you a really a diverse point of view and a different area of growth that you can really play off of. And it's kind of.
Something that not a lot of your peers can boast of when you're competing for jobs. And so it just kind of gives you also a really great way to learn about what engineering looks like around the world. When I was in Spain, I took three Spanish classes and differential equations, an engineering thermodynamics, and those were all taught by Spanish professors. They weren't at all in Spanish, but there's top by Spanish professors, so I got to learn a lot about what engineering looks like abroad and around the world, which is just pretty cool, unique experience that I wouldn't have got if I stayed in Fort Collins.
Awesome, thank you for sharing Kate. I wanna talk about some other opportunities as well. So we talked a little bit in the beginning of the presentation about applied knowledge and working on projects, working in teams and senior design and so this is a huge component to all of the learning objectives associated with our curriculum. So kindly do you want to share with us a little bit about your senior design projects with an S?
Sure, I definitely can do that. So yes, I am technically a part of two senior design projects this year.
My first project I have been on since I was a second year in the second semester had joined an. It's through a project called vertically integrated projects in the ECE Department and it basically allows students who are not seniors to hop onto a senior design and stick with it for a couple of years anet basic and it can give them leadership opportunities because they'll know a little bit more about the senior design project than other students hold. Just hop on on their senior year and it also gives you really great exposure to what to expect for senior design.
And it's more of that project based learning then you'll find in like a lecture based kind of curriculum that we normally have an, then the other senior talent project that I'm in, which is actually the one that I have credit for.
There's something called a smart well plate project. It's considered a bio medical engineering project, or it was.
Before, but all of us are electrical computers or bio Med electrical engineering students, and it's a really big team. There's probably eight of us on the team, and in a very basic explanation. Well played is basically a device used in the Pharmaceutical industry, for example to test if their pharmaceutical products work as explained. So for example, if you have a cancer product that supposed to reverse cancer in a cell, you can put a cell in one of the wells.
Put the pharmaceutical drug in it and test to see if the cell will still have cancer 10 days later. For example, kind of a thing. So that's kind of like the senior design project that I'm in, and it's a really interesting project, because for the longest time, I didn't expect my knowledge of computer engineering to Add all relate to the bio medical engineering realm, especially because I was never in that bio medical engineering aspect specifically in the dual degree that we kind of talked about earlier, but.
I absolutely love my project now. It's such a really awesome project and I'm actually the project lead for that senior design project an I'm the financial officer of the other senior design projects. I I have positions all over the place currently, but it's such a really awesome opportunity because senior design really is a great way to kind of dip your hands and apply the knowledge that you've learned in the first three or four years. Depending on your major and finally kind of start to solidify it and apply it to something.
That is, in like my example, a very new exam, new product to industry basically.
That's Super Awesome Kylie. Thank you so much for sharing about that. I wanted to talk a little bit as well. I had forgot to talk a little bit about honors program, so this is another really great way to engage and involve yourself on campus. Annina community straight away. So Kate, do you want to talk to us a little bit about the honors program? Both track one and two? And then what is the honors program like at CSU?
For sure, so the honors program at CSU is a super great opportunity to try some new things, so it's not just engineering majors, it's every major in every college combined, but Engineering is the most represented major in the honors program, so if you join as an engineer, you will not be alone. There are quite a few of us, basically what the honors program entails is a couple of different requirements to graduate with an honors certification on your degree, you're going to take Honors Seminars. You're going to take some honors versions of your normal classes.
And you're going to do it honors thesis. So Honor Seminars, I think are probably the coolest part of the Honors Program. They are special classes that are smaller there seminar style and there on just about any subject you could think. Gov and a lot that you haven't thought of before, so they are taught by professors who are super, really interested in the material. And no matter. I mean, it's a great opportunity to learn something outside of stem or just engineering. For example, the honors seminars that I've taken were on human sustainability. So what makes humans happy in city life?
And also about peacemaking throughout history, centering more on Martin Luther King Junior and the civil rights movement. So it was just completely not related to chemical and biological engineering. But I enjoyed both classes so very much because they are so unique and also different style of learning. Like a lot of your introductory lectures, chem 111 for example might be a large lecture Hall, but an introductory seminar is still only going to be, you know, Max 2730 people, so there are lot smaller, more personal and there a lot of cool topics.
And then what you're going to do is honors options. Some of your classes, which means that you take smaller and kind of smaller classes of of subjects that you already taking. So I had a friend who took an honors seminar or an honors option of differential equations, so his class was a little bit smaller. His professor went a little bit more in depth with the subject, so you kind of cover it to a greater extent, and that's what makes it an honors class. And then Lastly, probably the other pools thing about honors is the honors thesis. This is a bit like.
Senior design project or a capstone project where you really get to show your stuff and you take all year to make one big project. Now for most people you can do whatever you want. And when I say whatever, I mean whatever you could do an interpretive dance, you could do a photography project. You could write a paper. You could do a lecture if you're super open for interpretation. However, for engineers I know that a lot of times it's really helpful for us to double up our either our senior design or your senior.
Capstone with the honors thesis just to save a little bit of time because by senior year you're probably pretty Dang busy. And also you can go really in depth in different ways for both those projects. And when you combine them like that, you are only going to be able to write a paper about it. You can't write an interpretive depth or interpretive dance about like how bioreactors work. I don't think it would work that well, so it's you were restrained to a paper and then really quickly track one and track two. These are two different ways to do the Honors program at CSU. It gets kind of confusing.
But what it boils down to is track one is for first year students who are coming in as normal students. You take a couple of more honors seminars and then fewer honors optioning of classes. Track two is where it deviates a little bit track. One is what most people do track. Two is for students who are coming in as transfer students or with a lot of credits from high school. So a lot of AP or IB credits basically track to you. Take a few less honor seminars and then you'll do a few more.
Honors options of classes. So this is a great way to free up some credits if you want to add a minor. I took chose to do track too because I had a ton of International Baccalaureate credits and I wanted to minor in Spanish and I got that done by switching to track two. Most students are automatically funnels in track. One you have to ask to switch so there's a very brief overview of what honors looks like at CSU. I would also say just a quick word about the honors community. It's amazing. There's an entire residence Hall dedicated.
Honors students, so if you're interested in that, you can apply for it. The owners office is also in that building, and it's also where I had my seminars and it's right across the way from academic village engineering and so with such small seminars you really get to know your peers in my peacemaking center, there were ten of us and we got extra credit for bringing food in. So by the end of the semester, not only where we really good, pal, but we all knew each other. We're really good at, making a lot of one of my coworkers goose was in this class, and he made us the best carrot cake.
Which happened have pineapple in it that I have ever had. So we got to learn a lot about each other. So it's a very. It's a small community inside of CSU that you could totally get involved with if you're interested.
Awesome, thank you Kate and sweet. So as we're wrapping up here, I just want to hear a little bit of from each of you about a piece of advice for students looking to come in to see if you potentially or another institution, just on how to maybe get involved, or how to make the most of your time.
So let's go, let's go Sarah Kylie Camille and then wrap up with Kate.
Awesome yeah I have. I could go on forever about pieces of advice, but I guess for incoming freshman or transfer students just in general you come to CC am I would say kind of along the lines of what Camille said. Find something that you're passionate about and I always do that specially for engineering too, because engineering's pretty challenging. And if you don't like it completely or you don't like that subject, change it or change to a different engineering you know.
You can do what you want. That will make you happy because that's what you should put first and foremost is your happiness. So that's something that I definitely suggest for anyone that I help mentor. Talk to is just like you need to put your happiness First. Anniv Engineering's it. That's Great. 'cause it's super cool and I'm so biased, but if not, that's totally fine. And yeah, you do you.
Jacqueline Goldring
03:57:26 PM
If you have any questions please do reach out: jacqui.goldring@colostate.edu
Jacqueline Goldring
03:57:41 PM
Also, check out our upcoming event: https://www.engr.colostate.edu/future-students/engineering-exploration/
Yeah, kind of going off of Sarah is along the lines of happiness and like mental health. My advice to students is always just to give yourself a break when you're in high school as a senior and you're doing all your applications and you're really stressed because you stuff to do. School gave yourself a break every so often. And when you're a first year in college, college education and college learning is really different than high school learning. And sometimes it takes. Students may be a failed test to realize that what they're doing is not working and they need to just figure out a new way to do it. And that's totally OK.
And like don't be too **** ** yourself everyone. I mean I can't speak for everyone, but I have definitely failed. At least one of my tests in college so.
It happens and it's OK because engineering is hard, but just know that there is resources to help you if you're ever looking to get out of your red and things like that.
My advice also goes based off these people. These people Sarah and Kylie. Sorry it's remember that college and specifically engineering or really any major is not a cookie cutter. Specific way of going about anything like highly was saying if you fail a class it's OK. I did and I'm still on track to graduate even then like love what you do like like Sarah was saying it's you know if you keep finding minors that you love to do.
Feel free to tack on those minors. It's so fun. College is a great way to learn about different things about yourself, about other people about the world and at the same time you're changing the world just by getting a college education. So just remember, it is not a cookie cutter way of going about things.
And a piece of advice I have about getting involved is really just to try new things and it kind of seems like an understatement and pretty easy to do. But honestly, when to come on campus, attend the club fairs and attend the career fairs and attend any social event that vaguely catches your interest in my first and second years, I was really just attending all the events that seemed vaguely interesting to me and I ended up in some pretty neat clubs at the end of the day. You know, I found Spanish club wears their community.
A community of Spanish speakers who also love to dance and recite poetry. An I found allergy club, which is completely as nerdy as it sounds, is just a bunch of people from a bunch of different majors who really enjoy algy. We ate seaweed at our first meeting, super cute and so. Then you just really gotta get yourself out there and keep trying new things. 'cause the more new things that you try, the more likely it is that you land on something that really ends up being your niche in your spot and you'll find your home on campus for the next four or five years.
Yay, that's all such good advice. Let's give around Mfas. All of our student ambassadors fantastic and I know Camille had to shoot off. She has a meeting at 4 so she's off to her next meeting, but I wanted to say to everybody who tuned in as well know that we're here for you to be support networks. So any questions, concerns anything that you have like? Contact us, shoot me an email I can get you connected to any of our students. If you wanna do one on one appointments, I take a virtual tour. I drop some links in the chat as well that are super helpful and then also we have our big engineering exploration week coming up.
October 19th through the 24th, so it's a full week dedicated to engineering so you can connect with departments and directly so each day is dedicated to a different Department so you can go to lectures. You can go see some demonstrations in the labs and then the whole Saturday is about breakout sessions about like education abroad, financial aid, all those need to know areas, so check out the link. It's the last link in the chat there and we hope to see you in the future. So don't be shy. Reach out on, I hope you have a great rest of your afternoon and thanks for everybody who tuned in and go Rams.