Stevens Admissions: Ellyn's Blog

SPIRIT WEEK!

We are almost through Spirit Week!

What is Spirit Week you may ask? 
It is a week's worth of spirited activities geared towards the undergraduate student body aimed to instill more Stevens spirit and pride!  Spirit Week is the creation of me and my sister (Co-Spirit Chairs) on behalf of Gear & Triangle.  Along with our Spirit Committee in G&T and the rest of the members, we have been planning and executing this week.

We have already done "Take A Picture With Attila Day" on Monday, "Duck Hunt Videogaming" on Tuesday, and a Spirit Tshirt Swap on Wednesday.  They were all huge successes!

Here are some pictures we took throughout Monday...

Yesterday was Stevens Spirit T-Shirt Swap.  The premise is that we are trying to get students to get rid of their apparel from other schools and trade it in for a tshirt designed by yours truly :)

All tshirts collected are being donated to the Salvation Army.  The tshirt logo is below!

The last event and the FINALE of the week's activities is tonight and is a Human Chess Match.  We've asked faculty in playing a game of chess... with a twist.  Their chess board is life-sized and their pieces will be played by students.  We have bought the costumes and the various parts to make this event a success, so I'm definitely looking forward to it!

GO STEVENS SPIRIT!

CANADA

As promised, here are some pictures from Canada!

It really was an AMAZING experience to go to another country.  Before going there,the only other time/place I have been out of the US is when the field hockey team here at Stevens went to Argentina for a training trip in the summer of 2008.

In Canada, we did a bunch of cool things and really tried to experience as much as we could in our limited amount of time there.  Some of our sites included Niagara Falls, the CN Tower, the Floral Clock, the Canadian side of Lake Ontario, the Queen Elizabeth Museum, among many other places in Toronto.

Definitely a trip well worth it even though it was a cold spring break destination!

Student Elevator Pitch Competition (Preliminaries)

As I'm sure you are aware, Stevens is an extremely innovative and entrepreneurial school.  Stevens curriculum fosters students to become aware of these topics and sets the students up for success in the real-world.  As a result, the Office of Academic Entrepreneurship sponsors a competition for senior students every year.  Every Senior Design team is invited to participate in this competition if their project has the potential to turn into a business.

My senior design project, BicycleMapper, has the potential to be a very successful business, so we submitted an Executive Summary in hopes of getting selected for this competition.  Luckily for us, we were picked to participate!  This past Wednesday we had a preliminary competition where we gave an Elevator Pitch to a panel of experts (2 minute maximum) to tell them why our idea will be successful, why they should invest in it, and why it will make them money.  I am my group's speaking representative for this competition, so I was the one trying to persuade the panel.  This preliminary competition / feedback session was extremely helpful for my group and we got meaningful feedback which we will incorporate into our final elevator pitch during the competition on April 29th.

By the way, did I mention that there are prizes given to the top 3 teams in the competition!  More information about the competition and the Office of Academic Entrepeneurship can be found at http://www.stevens.edu/entrepreneurship/research-day/elevator_pitch.html

Just to give you a little information about my senior design project (I can't divulge all of the information), my group has developed a low-cost bicycle sharing system unlike anything currently on the market by retrofitting existing bikes and bike racks with our custom lock.

Busy Spring Break

Hello readers!  I'm sorry for my blogging absence... I was very busy during Spring Break!  I didn't decide to do the "traditional" Spring Break trip of going some place warm like Florida.  Instead, I spent my break in Candada to site-see and then in Maryland for an indoor field hockey tournament!  This is the first Spring Break that spent out and about rather than just relaxing at home.

CANADA

My sister, a friend, and I decided to go to Canada at the beginning of Spring Break.  My sister and I had never been there before so we figured it'd be something cool to see... and let me tell you, it was awesome!  We went to Niagara Falls and Toronto!  My next blog will go more into depth of what we did and have pictures, so look out for it :)

MARYLAND

Anyways, at the end of Spring Break, my sister, a friend, and I participated in a field hockey tournament in Maryland (near Washington DC).  I hadn't really played too much field hockey since season
ended in the fall,  because I chose to take a break and pick up running to train for a half marathon (which is less than a month away - can't believe it!).  Needlesstosay, I was really looking forward to playing.
We played on an adult club team and our name for the tournament was "Phun".  We wanted to be competitive and do well in the tournament, but our primary goal was just to have fun and enjoy playing! We were successful, because It really was a lot of fun!  I got to play some field hockey and meet new people!  The only downside... I am EXTREMELY sore today!

Stevens Campus Police

One important thing that every college campus features and rarely gets publicity is the Campus Police.  At Stevens, the police officers can be some of the friendliest and most helpful people on campus, so this blog is dedicated to the awesome work they do every day.  They always seem to have the best interests of the students in mind no matter what it is they are doing.

Furthermore, they are also active throughout campus in other activities outside of their involvement in law enforcement.  They've come to show their support at my sorority's pancake night, hosted self-defense seminars, and even driven me back to my apartment late at night when I lived in off-campus housing!

Click on the picture below to take a look at their website!

A Busy Few Days... Succeeding in Business Dinner, MATLAB Seminar, & Women's Basketball Game

Hello readers.  As the title of the blog alludes, it's been a busy few days... normally seniors coast during their last semester, but I instead took my "lighter" courseload to pursue more active roles in the organizations I'm involved in... the specifics (events I'm planning) will be talked about in later posts and I don't want to spoil it!  But stayed tuned to hear about it!

 

In other news, I have attended three cool events the past few days...

  The first event was a Succeeding in Business Dinner hosted by Women's Programming
& the Office of Career Development.  A successful Vice-President from Morgan Stanley came to campus for a session to give her do's and don't related to business.  Her "nuggets of wisdom" as she liked to call it gave all of the women in attendance a better view on the "soft" skills that women need to be successful in business.  I found the event to be extremely informative and the speaker really kept all of our attentions.  She was so personable and so honest!  It was a real treat to get to hear her speak (and eat some food from Vito's for dinner!)

Friday morning I went to a MATLAB Seminar.  MATLAB is a computing software sold by Mathworks.  It is one of the programs that comes pre-loaded on our laptops that we get as freshmen.  I've used it in a number of my undergraduate and graduate classes and have found it to be an extremely useful tool.  The only challenge I have dealt with it is the fact that I had no experience with it before college.  Learning the syntax and all of the powerful and useful features is a task in itself!  At this seminar, the instructor gave us some examples of cool problems that can be solved using the software.  I'm extremely happy I woke up on a Friday morning in order to go to it, because I know that it will be a program that I will use for years to come!

  Another event I went to was on Friday afternoon.  The women's basketball team had won their conference  and advanced to the NCAA tournament!  I am already a big advocate of school sports and like to go to as many games as I can, but I  really made sure I went to this game because some of the girls on the team are in my sorority.  I know that  they supported me and my team during our season, so I wanted to do the same for them.  Also, being in their place as a student-athlete, it meant the world to me to have my friends come to my games and support me.
The game was at William Paterson, so Stevens sent a bus to take students to the game.  A lot of students came out to support the team and really rep up Stevens at the game... we had quite a cheering section!  Although our team didn't come out victorious in the game, it was a real pleasure to watch our women play in the NCAAs and  see the team (and in particular, the seniors) give everything they had.

Women in Engineering

A few weeks ago, I was asked by one of my professors if I was interested in going and recruiting some friends to go speak at a high school in Clark, New Jersey and talk about women in engineering as part of a "Non-Traditional Career Day" that was being hosted by that school's guidance department.  I jumped at the chance to speak to young high school women and talk to them about why engineering is so great!

This morning, me and three friends went to speak on behalf of female engineers (and for Stevens of course!).  I asked people who had very different majors with different experiences under their belt in their respective field.  All of the women have distinguished themselves as leaders on campus through their involvement.

Here's the breakdown of who went and their majors:
Me - Mechanical Engineering
Lauren - Biomedical Engineering
Sarah - Civil Engineering
Mallory - Naval Engineering

So, there we were... 4 college students talking to 4 groups of freshman and sophomore high school students (groups of approximately 25).  We talked to them about a plethora of different topics: who we were, what we do on campus, what our research and work experience has been, why we chose engineering, what is engineering, what engineers do, and why they should consider it as a future career if it plays to their strengths.

I hope the students got something out of our discussion with them.  I'm hoping that we sparked an interested in some of those young women so they will consider it in their future so that female engineers will no longer be a "non-traditional" career!