Graduate Student Spotlight!

This past spring, I graduated Monmouth with Great Honor and received a BS in Software Engineering and a minor in math. From the time that I started the process of choosing a college to attend I knew that I wanted to be in a computer based major and Monmouth was always my first choice school. It was not until my open house visit to Monmouth that I learned about how the majors of Computer Science and Software Engineering were different, and it was then that I realized Software Engineering was the path that I wanted to go. Not only did I learn about what software engineering was all about, I also learned about the passion and knowledge that all of the professors in the Software Engineering and Computer Science department had for their field of expertise. Every professor in the department is knowledgeable and this makes the classroom learning environment more enjoyable and beneficial for the students.

Unlike most of my peers, entering the Software Engineering major was a big step out of my comfort zone. I came from a high school that did not offer any kind of computer science class which many of the people I met from day one had the opportunity to take. This made me pretty nervous that I was really behind all of the others and that I would really struggle with things that I should already have known or needed to be familiar with. That ended up not being the case and this is a result of the way the department has set up their curriculum. The courses that are offered, if finished in order, took me from the basics that I would need in all of the following courses to the most advanced courses over the course of my four years at Monmouth. All of the anxiety that I had on day one was quickly eased once I saw how much the staff at the school wanted me to succeed and built a curriculum that when followed correctly would allow me to fully master all of the topics that I would need in the “real world”. The SE major is set up well for the normal student to be able to get the fairly inflexible course load into a manageable four years, and still allow for the full college experience, which is just as important as the education that you are receiving! From the first day of orientation we were told that college is where you make the friends that you will have the rest of your life and my experience was exactly that.

My BS in Software Engineering from Monmouth has allowed my resume to stand out among several different employers, saying that it is a very reputable degree to have! I currently work at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) applying a lot of the concepts that I learned in the classroom to the work that I do. In the summer before my senior year I was hired as an intern with the FAA at the William J. Hughes Technical Center at the Atlantic City Airport. In this portion of the FAA the majority of the work is testing and evaluation of software and hardware products that are made by outside sources and given the final seal of approval before the system is rolled out into the real world. The scope of my job involves many different tasks depending on what stage of the software lifecycle the project is in. This can be peer reviewing design and requirements documents to make sure that the outside vendor is on the right path and will be making a product that has everything in it that the FAA requires. It can also be designing and reviewing test cases and writing and peer reviewing test and evaluation plans that we will use to test the product and then actually executing all of the tests in a very strict testing environment due to the safety critical nature of the systems being tested. Working with the FAA requires everyone to work within a team and be able to contribute in a relaxed but professional environment where it takes everyone on the team to reach the goals set out by the project management and project schedules.

Monmouth was able to teach me all of the skills necessary to be successful in a professional technical environment and was one of the best decisions I have made!