Keala Gapin — Research Award
Major: chemical and biological engineering
Post-graduation plans:graduate school at Stanford University
This award recognizes undergraduate students with demonstrated excellence in research. Research endeavors could be an extension of academic work or a DLA appointment.
What is your favorite memory from your time at CU Boulder?
My favorite memories from my time at CU have truly revolved around the friends I have made over the course of my degree. I have very fond recollections of everything from our late nights working on campus to our birthday celebrations and fun get-togethers. I think back to our random wandering up to the UMC roof or to our karaoke interludes to our evenings filled with senior design assignments. It's the moments of laughter and life infused into the academic experience by these people who have so much to offer that continues to inspire and motivate me.
Tell us about a moment or moments when you felt like you were "officially" an engineer.
Feeling like an “official” engineer, even engineering student, took a long time. I certainly felt little different than my peers in non-engineering majors my first year at CU when we were all taking the same general education courses. Even with some of my first, more CHEN-specific work in my second year, it was difficult to feel like a “real engineer” in comparison to the upperclassmen in the major. Some of my second semester courses that year began to feel specialized and fundamentally designed for engineering but, knowing there was so much left in my engineering coursework to complete, even then I couldn’t fully convince myself I was engineering anything. It took until my third year as a CBEN major to feel officially like an engineer. My courses in the spring of my junior year were challenging, felt instrumental to engineering work, and were distinctly specialized from the courses of other majors. Combined with how previous coursework began to weave into our lessons, these junior-level classes (Separations, Biokinetics, Biomaterials...) were some of the first to make me feel like an “official” engineer.
What was the biggest challenge for you during your engineering education? What did you learn from it?
One of the great challenges of an engineering education is that it is an "applied science": more than any other type of coursework I've taken, it has demanded that I think creatively and realistically about the applications and implications of my work. At a fundamental level the material is difficult, but even more than that it challenges those who take it on to delve into how it manifests in the real world and how we can use these principles to design a novel future. One of the things I have taken from the challenge of an engineering courseload, though, is the importance of support systems. I have grown tremendously as a student, a person, and an engineer because of the relationships I have fostered amongst peers, TAs, and instructors in my department. It has been through collaboration and mentorship that I have gotten the most out of my engineering education and found the best ways to surmount its unending set of challenges.
What is your biggest piece of advice for incoming engineering students?
Incoming engineering students: don't be intimidated by the reputation of your major. The material is hard, and it requires persistence, dedication, and a love of learning and growing. But it isn't impossible and, with the right people, it can be the absolute best thing you have ever done. Finding your support systems and the reasons you want to become an engineer are critical to succeeding —and even thriving — in the discipline. Don't be afraid to seek out help. Office hours were a life-changing experience for me. And by no means is being an engineering student a barrier towards doing other things! Another big piece of advice of mine is to not get sucked into your engineering coursework alone: allow yourself to explore other interests and bring your engineering mindset to those situations. I am so grateful that while I was at CU I was able to perform research, get involved in on-campus organizations, take classes towards minors that fascinated me, and study abroad. Whatever passions you want to further develop, find ways to do that. Be judicious in how you plan your degree to make space for non-engineering coursework that feeds your curiosity and allows you to get out of the engineering mindset - if even for just a few hours a week. I've found that the semesters I have had some humanities or basic science class alongside my engineering coursework I have felt the most balanced and least burnt-out. Take time to stretch your brain in different ways — it gives your engineering self a break every once in a while.