While I've been at ASU, I would say that I've really met some of the most interesting people that I've met in my life, and many of those people have been professors. We have some of the world's leading scholars. There are people here that specialize in whatever it is you are interested in. It is definitely an advantage of having a larger university with a large faculty.
I have had teachers that really take the time to get to know me and are looking out for my success which I didn't think I would get at such a big school. I don't call them students, I call them 'junior colleagues.' Everything's fun, just the things they come up with. The new people are not locked in the old ways of thinking. Some of the things we, at ASU, developed helped the rest of the world! The future belongs to the innovative and creative.
The best way to learn that is to practice it, that means that our students have the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research, work on projects for companies. We create new degree programs that are interdisciplinary. I feel like I have incredible opportunity to innovate here. What we're about is designing the solutions to the problems that we are confronting today, and there isn't any kind of problem that you can conceptualize that you can't learn to solve here.
I think one of the things that sets us apart from a lot of other universities is that we're not static, we don't come here and learn something that was taught 20 years ago, we come here and learn where the edges of disciplines are. We were asked to create a brand new medical device that answers a question that researchers in the medical field are asking, and make a device that is now becoming a business.
When I tell people about it, they're like "Well, you're not master students and you probably won't get very far." That's not what our professors say because they back us up. We are a research institution which means that the faculty you have, whatever campus you're on, our faculty that are nationally and internationally known, and are on the cusp of the research they are doing. My goal is to interact with students in everything that I do. Students are bright, have ideas, enthusiasm, and energy, and make things happen.
To be treated like another researcher is wonderful, because you're not just sitting and cleaning dishes, you're getting to do more. You're getting to use your creative thinking to make a difference. I was able to go down to Mexico to do archaeological research for a summer and then continue that into a research project for the next year that I have loved working on.
To be able to go to another country and do paid research as an undergraduate is amazing. I have very few friends anywhere in the country who are doing something that incredible. So I'm sitting here at the bio-design institute here at ASU. It's a cutting-edge, world-class facility where biological research is conducted, and as an undergraduate, I've had the privilege of being able to work here. It really is beyond anything I ever could've ever imagined.
We have a lot of industry sponsoring and that's just phenomenal for people who want that hands-on experience. We have deep engagement with industry here and that's often difficult to do. They're actually working on developing real solutions and they're doing that with mentorship from the companies, and then often, that leads directly to job offers. It's been very critical for us to establish a long term relationship with Arizona State. It's a win-win for both Intel and the university.
In-fact, Intel hires more graduates out of ASU than any other university, and this is going across multiple disciplines. That's our focus, learn to innovate, and innovate to learn. I have an internship with the Arizona Senate in the research department. I could of never imagined that I would secure an internship of this magnitude at such a young age. It's unreal that undergraduates are doing the things that they are doing here.
No comments:
Post a Comment