Sonia Travaglini being awarded the prestigious Teaching Effectiveness Award (TEA). Photo credit: Anne BriceIn Spring 2018, Sonia Travaglini was awarded with the prestigious Teaching Effectiveness Award (TEA), organized the Graduate Council’s Advisory C…
Category: education
education
Berkeley MEng GSI Jonathan McKinley receives 2018 Outstanding GSI Award
Kim Voss, Associate Dean of the Graduate Division, presenting Jonathan with his award.On Tuesday, May 1, 2018, the Graduate Division and Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Teaching and Resource Center presented Jonathan McKinley with the Outstanding GSI…
MEng cohorts mingle at 6th annual Alumni Happy Hour
By Caroline OstermanIt was a cheerful winter night full of bear hugs, great food, and happy reunions. The Fung Institute’s 2018 Alumni Happy Hour brought MEng students and alumni alike together on Friday, March 9, 2018 at the Microsoft Reactor in San F…
Reaping the Benefits of an International community
By Giselle DiazYou have been working with Hilti ever since you graduated the M.Eng program. What has motivated you to stick with the company for so long?I have always felt that the best way to learn and grow is to have your assumptions challenged, eith…
2018 Eaton-Hachigian Fellowship Recipients
By Caroline OstermanThe College of Engineering and the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2017–18 Eaton-Hachigian Fellowships, awarded this year to two students pursuing Master of Engineering degrees…
How Teamwork and Friendship Build upon each other
Written by Michael Chai, Edited by Maya Rector
Throughout my term at UC Berkeley and in the Master of Engineering program, my capstone project was undoubtedly where I spent the most of my time and effort. It was an opportunity to work on something that I was truly passionate about; it was also a great relief from the more traditional forms of learning (think homework, midterms, finals, etc.). While all students improve their technical skills and gain a tremendous academic experience by working on a capstone project, I’d like to touch on one aspect of the experience that I feel is just as important — working with your team members and advisers.
Early on in the capstone selection process, students are asked to submit their top choices for projects they would like to work on. Almost all students, myself included, selected projects that they thought were the most interesting and closely-related to their field of study. What we neglected was the fact that choosing a capstone project also meant choosing your team members for the next nine months. Even though it is important to be in a project that you are passionate about, I think it’s equally as important to be with team members that you’d want to be working with for the duration of your M.Eng. program. I personally had overlooked this fact.
However, I was fortunate enough to be placed in a project with two other students that were great teammates who turned into great friends.
Our team for the Point-of- Care Diagnostics for Global Health capstone project consisted of three members: Hui-Ling Koh (BioE’14), Ian Legaspi (IEOR’14), and myself (BioE’14). Although I had never met Ling and Ian before we started the program, we discovered that we actually had a lot in common. Ling and I both attended the same high school, the International School of Beijing, and Ian and I went to UCLA for our undergraduate studies. The three of us also shared an interest in food. Almost all of our team meetings involved exploring the multitude of restaurants in Berkeley and its surrounding areas (Korean BBQ in Oakland is one of our favorites). Above all, we shared a love for Disneyland. One month into our project, we had already made a weekend team-bonding trip to the Happiest Place on Earth. It is fair to say that if you’re willing to spend 15 hours in the car and a whole day running around and lining up for roller coasters with someone, you’re no longer just capstone project team members — you are friends.
Our team made the extra effort to build a relationship with each other outside of school, which definitely paid off and translated into how our capstone team worked as a whole.
Being friends with my team members really made working hard and sometimes going above and beyond much easier for me. Some specific examples I can think of are: running experiments at 1 or 2 AM, attending weekly lab meetings early in the morning, taking turns setting up experiments during spring break, and attending workshops and networking events in San Francisco. It also made me more open to offer and receive criticism, because I knew at the end of the day, they are my friends and have the group’s and my best interest in mind.
As you will learn in the Organizational Behavior class, when you care about someone, you are willing to make compromises for them. Throughout the nine months, conflicts and issues are sure to arise, but when you care for and trust your team members, you will be able to work resolve and through them.
I strongly believe that the M.Eng. program has helped me prepare for the professional world in many ways. Besides improving my technical skills by taking classes at one of the best engineering schools in the world, I have also developed the interpersonal skills that are necessary in any job you will take after graduation. However, what I’m truly grateful for was the chance to meet my capstone team members and all the other wonderful people in the MEng program.
Hui-Ling now works as a R&D Engineer at Teco Diagnostics. Ian works at Connora Technologies as the Director of Operations. Michael works as a Technical Sales Engineer at COMSOL.
How Teamwork and Friendship Build upon each other was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
M.Eng. Student Perspective: Berkeley Audio Design Challenge (pt. 1)
Written by Shail Shah, Edited by Iris Wu
UC Berkeley’s Audio & Education Design Challenge, sponsored by Bose and Autodesk, took place on Oct. 22, 2016. Shail Shah was on one of the two winning teams.
I was excited to take part in the Berkeley Audio Design Challenge for a few reasons. First, it was my first “hackathon” or design sprint challenge. I’ve never had the experience of taking a design from concept to prototype to pitch within such a short time. Not unsurprisingly — it was really tough!
Second, I was deeply interested in the prompt; I’m kind of a hi-fi audio fanatic. I have a handful of speakers around my house which I designed and built. I like audio because to me it’s a beautiful intersection of engineering/physics and art/creativity.
Third, I was drawn to the target of the challenge — designing an educational tool. I like to be involved in educational extracurriculars, especially focusing on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education. As an undergraduate, I volunteered at Richmond High School building electronic bicycles with students after school, and while I worked in Michigan I participated in a program organized by SAE and Toyota, which focused on bringing automotive engineering into the fifth-grade classroom. I benefitted a lot from strong mentors and access to opportunities when I was younger, and I want to be sure I can do the same for others.
A big factor in my team’s success during in the Challenge was how well we worked with one another. We were diverse in that we came from different academic backgrounds, and we had a good spread of seniority (there were two upper-classmen and two lower-classmen). Throughout the challenge, I organized the team’s efforts, leading the brainstorming activity and delegating the workload.
It was pretty nice being able to apply the skills we are learning in the M.Eng. program — not just technical, but also leadership — directly in a fast-paced team-project environment.
One of the biggest coaching moments in my team followed our initial pitch to the judges. My team had essentially made an entire curriculum for our product, and because of that we had trouble conveying a clear message to our judges. Before the judges announced the finalists, I worked with the team to decide what our key story was, and we revised our pitch.
Honestly, at the time we weren’t expecting to make it past the first round.
I just wanted to work through the pitch as a teaching moment, so that we could all learn a little more from the experience. Fortunately for us, we did have a chance to present the revised pitch. I think the succinct user experience we made in the final presentation, along with the allusions to the depth of the curriculum we had thought of, made our product the most compelling, and led to our success.
I’m so happy I got to take part in the Design Challenge. I really appreciated the mix of students that turned out, and how we got to work with people who we don’t usually interface with on campus. Pairing M.Eng. students with undergraduate teams worked really well; I definitely benefitted from the creativity and the energy of my teammates, and I also enjoyed the leadership side of the challenge. Based on the experience, I started looking for more interdisciplinary team projects, and have joined other design challenges across campus. I hope there’s another M.Eng. Design Challenge in the Spring!
M.Eng. Student Perspective: Berkeley Audio Design Challenge (pt. 1) was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up…
By Joseph Bynoe
As a senior in high school, you are asked to channel the infinite wisdom you gained during 17–18 years of being a kid to choose a career that would potentially guide the rest of your adult life… Have you ever thought how ridiculous that sounds?
I was one of the lucky ones. I was 12 when I decided that I was going to be an aerospace engineer. With my deep passion for space travel and spaceship design, it seemed like the job was practically created for me. Every academic decision I made was for that purpose and culminated in an aerospace engineering degree. Growing up, it would’ve been impossible for you to convince me that I would become anything else. Well here I am, almost 26, a programmer, and I can’t put into words how miserable I would be as an aerospace engineer.
In my senior year of undergrad, I realized that aerospace was way too theoretical for my liking and wasn’t really the career for me. I felt totally lost, and I thought I was the only one. I had spent so long studying aerospace engineering that doing anything else just seemed impossible. It wasn’t until I started speaking to some of my mentors — senior people who have been in the business world for decades — that I realized they were just like me. They were richer and more successful, but just as lost.
The truth is the majority of us will never know what we truly want to do. Even though there will be times when you feel extremely trapped in your decision, know that for the most part it is all about your mindset. You may be a software engineer today, but there is little stopping you from being a carpenter down the road. Who knows, you may already have the experience you need, you just don’t realize it.
So what do you do when you feel trapped? How do you get out? You rebrand!
In 2012, people saw me as an aerospace engineer, and I was turned down on positions outside of this field. It didn’t matter that I was a super hard worker and a quick learner — all they saw was an aerospace engineer.
To rebrand, I went back to school. I was extremely fortunate to get into the Master of Engineering program at UC Berkeley. When I graduated I was not just an aerospace engineer, but also a mechanical engineer with a focus in product design. The leadership, business, and technical skills that I learned in the M.Eng. Program made my resume stand-out, and I was hired as a Product Manager at a startup.
When the startup life lost its charm, I started looking again. I set my sights on rebranding into the “sexiest job of the 21st century”: a data scientist. With no formal programming background, however, I didn’t consider myself a top contender. Instead of heading back to school, I reflected on my past jobs and academics for relevant experience. To my surprise, I was a pretty legitimate candidate having programmed at a number of my previous jobs. I was self-taught but always delivered. I even dragged that long lost aerospace engineering degree back to showcase my analytic proficiency.
Rebranding my skills and experience helped me to morph from an aerospace engineer to a mechanical engineer to a product manager and finally into a data scientist, but I doubt that’s where I’ll stop. Someone once told me that you take jobs to find out what you don’t want to do in life, and that is definitely true for me.
So what’s next? I’ve set my sights on rebranding into a billionaire — but that story is for a different article.
Maybe you’ll read this and think I’m just a serial career hopper, or maybe you’ll be able to relate. Whether you realize your career just isn’t for you, you feel underutilized, or you just get bored, there will be a point when you feel lost or trapped. The key is to remember that you can change it — all you need is some rebranding. Take a course, network and look for past relevant experience to rebrand yourself. No one is saying it is going to be easy, but it is possible!
So what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ll probably never know for sure. They say, it is the journey not the destination that matters, so don’t forget to enjoy it.
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up… was originally published in Berkeley Master of Engineering on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.