Engineering a Brighter Future

Valparaiso University’s College of Engineering is known for its competitive, top-tier programs that push students to the heights of their potential and allow them to dream bigger than they ever have before.

“I originally started out as an electrical engineering major. I always knew that I wanted to do something with robotics, and before I came to Valpo, I had someone tell me to not get a very specialized degree and to get one that is broader to allow for more options,” Anand said. “I remember talking to professor Khorbotly about his research and I thought to myself ‘yeah that’s pretty cool and that’s something I’d like to be doing.’’’ Anand says.

Our faculty is known for their ability to connect with their students and provide support inside and out of the classroom, and Anand credits the support that he found from his professors for his ability to take on two majors.

“Even to this day I feel like the program that I am doing is a completely faculty led initiative. I found that a lot of the courses that I needed to be taking overlapped, so my professors took on the task of making sure my schedules are ready for each semester,” Anand says. “I know it must be so time consuming for them, but they do it because they truly want to see me succeed, and I’m so grateful for that.”

The support that Anand saw from his professors does not stop at assuring that he has all of the classes he needs to graduate. During his freshman year, at the height of the pandemic, his professors were still able to organize a way for him to have a meaningful internship in his field.

“I was researching at Brookhaven National Laboratories thanks to my professors. This was my freshman year, and we were building plates for a reactor and it was really cool to be able to say ‘I made that, I built that.” Anand says.

And the support that he saw from his educators continued through his sophomore, junior and now senior year as he was able to find a position in prestigious internships that provided additional valuable experience.

“Sophomore year, I was at Eli Lilly working on project process engineering, so evaluating an up-and-coming line and evaluating its risks,” Anand said. “Then we were looking at one of their sites and how we can reduce human workload, particularly in areas such as loading and unloading products,” he says.

And his love for engineering was cemented as he continued to have valuable learning opportunities that allowed him to see the multifaceted world of engineering.

“Junior year, I was on site in Indy and I was taking care of three manufacturing lines that bring out the most profitable drug for the company,” Anand says. “I was also doing side by side projects where I was retrofitting old instruments into an interoperability device, so if you had an old lab instrument you can connect it to the internet and collect data from it.” Anand says.

Members of our faculty are involved in the STAR experiment, which aims to understand the spin of the proton and nEDM searches at Brookhaven, which allows for our students to get hands-on experiences that wouldn’t be available otherwise. And the experiences that our future engineers are exposed to help to form an idea of what a possible career path could look like.

“After I graduate, I want to get a few years of industry experience,” Anand says. “Then I want to try to get my MBA to allow myself the possibility of being in a leadership position. I have above average interpersonal skills, and while I love the technical side of things, I’d also like to work on the administrative side and lead people,” he said.

Anand is just one excellent example of what our students at the College of Engineering are capable of as they work toward achieving their full potential. With guidance from our exemplary faculty, Anand was able to be involved in several internships, and his relationships with his educators have grown stronger as he continued to thrive. Now, as he makes progress on his final year at Valpo, Anand wishes only that he can leave the student organizations that he was involved in with a sense of accomplishment and hope for future betterment.

“I’m president of the Valpo chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, which is the national honor society for electrical engineering and computer science students. We work on making sure engineering students at Valpo get the experience that we got. It could be internships, looking at resumes, or preparing for licensures,” Anand says. “We are basically here for them in a way that others were here for us. And that’s the community that I will miss when I graduate, but I hope will continue to thrive even after I leave,” he said.