Erin Knight

Albion prepared Erin.

The biggest advantage is the well-rounded education that you end up with. Unless you want to go into a strictly technical route, being exposed to a range of subjects from women's studies to world religions challenges you to learn to formulate opinions and have discussions. When you work in a dynamic corporate structure, most of your day is spent navigating the business processes, negotiating with peers or across groups and learning new things. Although I do occasionally have to remember how to set tuning parameters or explain to someone what an endothermic reaction is, it isn't the biggest part of my day.

Another real benefit was the small class size at Albion. At a bigger school many students get lost in the intro chemistry and math classes, and even if they pass they don't necessarily internalize the concepts. At Albion, professors were very accessible and we had great class discussions.

Taking a couple of classes as independent study while I was at Albion was really useful. Not only was it instrumental in letting me graduate in five years, but I think the experience of working through things on my own was a good experience for the work world, when you don't always have a lot of direction but still need to figure out how things work. Also, I found that thermodynamics and reactions engineering were pretty easy after taking the pre-reqs at Albion. The courses at Albion covered most of the concepts, so I was way ahead of my classmates at Michigan in those areas.

Take It Further: Dual Degree Program in Engineering, Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science

More Success Stories