I am currently in my last year of my undergraduate degree. I study Computer Engineering at McMaster University. I am also in the Engineering and Society program, and have completed a Minor in Business. As I wrap up my degree and with my, I am looking forward to all the different career opportunities that are out there and how I can apply what I have learned to those jobs.
In my studies, I have covered a variety of fundamental topics in electrical, computer, and software engineering. These topics include:
- Circuit design
- Computer hardware design
- Computer software design
- Microelectronics
- Finite state machines
- Communication networks
- Random processes
- And many more..
I have also gotten to work with various coding languages and hardware components. These include languages like Python, Java, and C, and hardware components such as microcontrollers and FPGAs. All these tools allowed me to apply the fundamental knowledge that I learned in class in a hands-on setting in the lab.
The Engineering and Society program is one that is unique to McMaster University. Extending your degree by a minimum of two semesters, Engineering and Society includes extra courses that focus heavily on the topics of sustainability, ethics, and inquiry-based research. It also gives room in a traditionally busy engineering schedule to take what are called focus electives, which allow students in the Engineering and Society program to take electives outside of the engineering department and learn about other interests while attending university. There are enough of these focus electives that getting a minor is accessible without further extension of your degree.
I used the focus electives provided by the Engineering and Society program to earn a minor in business. The courses I took to achieve my minor gave me some insight into the workings of a business, including tactics for strategies for organizational structuring, marketing, human resource management, and optimizing business operations. These strategies, in combination with all of the work on sustainability and ethics from Engineering and Society, have developed me into someone who thinks more critically and holistically when approaching not just engineering problems, but in all problem-solving scenarios I approach.