Stevens Admissions: Ellyn's Blog

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.

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!

Senior Design

The culmination of a Stevens education is the senior design project.

I remember being a freshman and hear all of the cool things that the seniors were doing for their projects.  Well... I'm in that position now.

I'm fortunate enough to have a great project and a great team to work with.  Our group is the opposite of what you'd expect from a tech school... 3 girls in a group ha!

All of us have Mechanical Engineering backgrounds.  One of my group members is getting her Master's in Computer Engineering and my other group member and myself are getting our Master's in Systens Engineering.  Our core mechanical background and master's degrees are proving to be extremely helpful with helping our project come to fruition.


Anyways, we're hard at work and have already submitted a proposal paper and done a proposal presentation.  I am excited to watch the project as it progresses and to see the final result at the end of the year!

http://www.stevens.edu/ses/academics/undergraduate/senior_design.html is a link with more information.

APOLOGIES!

As it always is, this is a VERY busy time of year!  I apologize it's been a week and a half since my last post!

Balancing school, sports, and clubs is always an interesting time management skill.  It is probably one of the biggest life lessons you can learn in college: time management!

Like I've briefly mentioned in previous posts, I'm excited for this school year.  I'm onto classes that are exclusively geared towards my major and things that really interest me.  It's a lot of work but I'm ready to make the commitment.

FIELD HOCKEY... the fun stuff! We had an away game at Nazareth College yesterday.  We left Friday night for a 6.5 hour bus ride up to our hotel to spend the night before our game on Saturday.  This was our first conference game of the season.  Conference games are SO important.  If we win, we not only get the honor of being named Conference Champions but we also get an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament.  Field hockey has been a lot of fun so far this season and I'm excited to see what our team can do!

On to clubs and extracurriculars.... this morning I woke up early for my sorority to help volunteer at a flea market.  We were selling old stuff from the house so we can donate money for our foundation.

RANDOM WEBSITE THAT I LOVE
www.hoboken411.com
It's got almost all you need to know about the current goings-on in Hoboken.

Beginning of a new (school) year

Junior... yup, I'm a Junior now... it sounds so weird to say it!  I am beginning the bulk of my Mechanical Engineering curriculum from now on.

First, let me talk a little about my life outside of academia.

I am a peer mentor here (information about the program can be found at http://www.stevens.edu/provost/academics/undergraduate/asc/mentor.html ). Basically, my role is to help ease the transition for the freshmen into college.  I emailed them over the summer and actually got to meet them all face to face recently.  I tried my best to give them tips to succeed and answer any questions they may have had.

FIELD HOCKEY! After a hot preseason, the regular season has begun.  We've been working hard and hope that it shows during our games.  Currently, we're 2-0 on the season and hope to keep trucking along like we have been.  Last season was a very successful one and we are hoping to repeat it this season.  Read up more about the team at http://www.stevensducks.com/sports/fhockey/SeasonPreview.asp .

Lore-El.  Like I have mentioned in my previous posts, I am living in the Lore-El Center this year.  Located on frat row (aka Castle Point Terrace), it is the housing for the Women's Resource Center.  We have already begun brainstorming and planning for the women's events for this semester! It should be a good one!

ON TO SCHOOL...
This semester is the first where the majority of my classes are geared towards Mechanical Engineering.  We're only a week in but I can already tell you that it's going to be a challenging yet fulfilling semester.  The classes are difficult but the material seems to be classes I am going to really enjoy (which I am glad is the case or else I'd be worried about my choice in major!).

Midnight Breakfast & My First Final

Midnight Breakfast was WILD this semester!

To make a long story short... let's just say that I accidentally stepped on a police officer! :(
It was unintentional I swear! One of the new features of the midnight breakfast involved impairment goggles aka "beer goggles". I put on the goggles and was asked to do a variety of tasks: walk in a straight line, pick up a set of keys, balance on one leg, touch my nose, and throw a football through a hoop.
I don't remember when it was during walking in a straight line or going to pick up the keys... at some point I stepped on the officer. UGH, oops!

Attached is a picture of my sister trying to balance on one leg with the goggles on. As seen from the picture, she was quite unsuccessful.

My First Final

The reason I haven't blogged in a while is because of the hours I put into studying for my first final thsi semester. I literally spent 20 hours in the library studying for it.
The class: Mechanical Engineering Thermodynamics (sounds intense, right?!).
What we learned over the course of the semester was all about energy, work, heat transfers, and different types of systems.

OK, I'm off to study for my next final...  that's at 8am on Monday morning...