Brendon
Raraigh `02
B.S. Electrical Engineering
M.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
Field Engineer, Northrop Gruman Corp., Baltimore, Maryland
"I always had intentions of continuing my education after Behrend for at least a master's degree. My plan was originally to get a job and go to school in the evenings and let my employer pay for my graduate work.
After speaking with numerous people-professors, coworkers, and anyone else I trusted-I decided to pursue a full-time graduate program. I knew that once I was in the 'real world' it would be hard to put in the time to finish a graduate program. Despite the job offers I had, I chose to accept a teaching assistantship at Pitt that covered all of my academic expenses and also paid me a large enough stipend to live a small step above the poor college student life I was used to.
A typical day in grad school usually consisted of sleeping in until about 10:30, heading in to the school and either sitting in on the class that I was the TA for or holding office hours. Office hours usually ended up being the time that I would grade homework and quizzes. After lunch and a trip to the gym, the afternoons were usually spent in the labs or doing homework for my classes. We generally had a crowd when we worked on homework because it was very time-consuming and it helped a lot to bounce ideas off of other people. Many of the projects were team-based and pretty much everything else was open to teamwork solutions. Since a lot of the homework wasn't graded the only thing that mattered was if you understood the material and problems.
After dinner it was class time, usually three- to three-and-one-half-hour classes once a week. My suggestion to anyone going to grad school is don't take four graduate classes at one time! Three grad courses are more like seven or eight undergraduate courses.
Behrend prepared me very well for graduate school and the working world. I really believe that a good engineer doesn't know everything, but they learn quickly, think methodically, have a good problem-solving approach, and know where and how to find answers. From that standpoint I honestly feel like my education is on par with any in the world. I can't say enough good things about the electrical engineering faculty. Drs. Ralph Ford, Thomas Hemminger, and Chris Coulston are all dedicated to providing students with an excellent education."