Extracurricular Activities
FIRST Robotics Competition mentor (2019-2021) - Adult mentor for high-school student members constructing a robot to complete a game challenge. Mechanical/electrical design focus; Badger Venture Pitch Competition (2019); Catalyze Klamath Pitch Competition (2022); GAMBLER 500 Forest Cleanup (2019 to Present) - A coordinated cleanup even of public lands throughout south-central Oregon using offroad vehicles
A Little Bit About Me
I’m 23 years old, and I’ve lived most of my life on my parents' ranch in eastern Klamath County. From a young age I’ve always been fascinated with mechanical things, going so far as to disassemble my parents’ VCR when I was about 5 years old; so, it should be no surprise that my favorite hobbies are repairing cars and building experiments with home-lab electronics in my free time. Going out and exploring the national forest lands in built offroad trucks and cars is a common way you’ll find me spending my weekends as well. And of course, my best friends will always be my dogs, our three border collies Sugar, Brownie and Tigger.
Why I Chose Oregon Tech and My Major
I chose Oregon Tech because of its proximity to home. I grew up here in the Klamath Basin on my family's ranch, and still live with them to this day helping out with the ranch's operation. Oregon Tech had a big focus on hands-on learning, so it fit my learning style as well. Mechanical engineering was a natural choice, as I always loved working on our farm equipment and solving problems with them wherever I could.
My Influential Professors
Sean Sloan has become one of my favorite MMET professors at Oregon Tech, bar none. His teaching style is fun, interesting, and extremely educational- his thermodynamics and fluids classes are some of the first real engineering classes here that I can say I fully understand. He's always available to help students and treats them with respect. He has a way of boiling down complex processes into small, realistic steps that are easy to follow, and I honestly think he's rekindled the interest in real-world engineering that I was starting to lose in so many theory-based classes. And he almost always has a fun life story to follow every problem in class!
My Greatest Learning Experience At Oregon Tech
My greatest experience so far has just been learning exactly how capable I really am. I came into college very unsure of my abilities and with endless nervousness about both academic and social performance. But through the encouragement of the great faculty and good friends I've made at Oregon Tech, I’ve become much more confident in myself than I ever thought possible.
My Plans After Graduation
For at least the first few years, I hope to get hired as a product or plant engineer with Jeld-Wen, located right here in Klamath Falls. After that I would love to move into any transportation related industry, whether it would be automotive, locomotive, or aerospace. I love building things that move, and all these industries will always have some level of demand which would give me the greatest potential for income stability on which I could raise a family.