7/10/2012 By Meredith Staub
Written by By Meredith Staub
Stanley Chang, a senior in mechanical engineering, was recently made a Knight of St. Patrick for his outstanding involvement in the College of Engineering.
The Knight of St. Patrick is an annual award given by the College of Engineering to students who represent leadership, excellence in character, and exceptional contribution to the College of Engineering and its students. The award is one of the highest student honors granted by the college.
Chang began his education at the University of Illinois as an Aerospace Engineering major. He decided to switch to the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering (MechSE) after his sophomore year.
“It was the broad range of subjects that attracted me, compared with what I was doing in Aerospace, which was a bit more specialized,” Chang said. “I wanted a broader area of study. So with MechSE, you know there are different areas of study such as heat transfer, thermodynamics, materials, nanoprocessing, etc. So that wide range of possibility that you can get after getting a ME degree really intrigued me and sort of moved me in this direction. And so far, I feel like it’s been one of the best choices I’ve made in college, to have the courage to transfer.”
Because of his decision to switch majors, Chang will graduate a semester late as he completes his mechanical engineering major and technology management minor. Although this meant he was slightly behind his classmates, Chang found the other ME students to be incredibly supportive.
“Everyone’s just been so helpful,” Chang said. “If you’re in the computer lab with a question, people will definitely help you out. That’s not usually the case in some other majors. It’s competitive here, but a nice competitive. It’s geared towards everybody doing well, and I like that.”
Chang was an engineering learning assistant for the MechSE section of the College of Engineering’s introductory freshman course, ENG 100. Traditionally, the new students work on a significant project in teams for a portion of the semester. As an idea for a new project, Chang wrote a proposal for LEGO robots that the students could construct and operate to complete challenges. The project turned out to be wildly popular among the students.
“I was really excited to see that they liked the project,” Chang said. “They got to know each other, they got to know the people that they’re going to be having classes with for the next four years, and for me that was a really good thing to see. I really enjoyed that process.”
Chang’s greatest contribution to the college has been serving as student director for the 2012 Engineering Open House, held on March 9 and 10. The event is traditionally student-led and open to students of all schools and ages, which makes for a very rewarding experience, Chang said.
“You know, you have kids playing with all these engineering-related exhibits, there’s bound to be some effect on them in the future towards the STEM fields, and it’s just a really good way to reach out and do that,” Chang said. “And it’s been really rewarding, just because I can see my results. It’s only two days out of the year that I see my results, but just thinking that we see over 20,000 people come each year is incredible. Once I see those people flooding around the engineering campus, I’m just like, ‘Yes, this is awesome, this is what I’ve been working towards.’ It’s really rewarding that way.”
One of Chang’s many contributions to Engineering Open House was working with the Admissions Department to make Engineering Open House more visible to prospective students, and to show them the quality of the programs here at Illinois.
“In the past, admissions wasn’t present,” Chang said. “This year we’re having a department expo, where each department, including MechSE, has a table and a poster board along with people staffed there so high school students who come here, who are interested in engineering, can go directly to the table they want to learn about what options are available here. I also reached out to the general University of Illinois admissions; they’ll have a table detailing how you apply to the University of Illinois.
“It was a way for me to give back to the university, to make it better,” Chang said.
Chang interned at Microsoft in the summer of 2011 and will be returning there this summer in a Program Management position. In a future career, he’d like to balance business with engineering.
“Dealing with different types of partners that Microsoft has is something that I’m looking forward to,” Chang said. “I want a job that has international operations within a high-technology company. So I want to have that experience, to go in that general direction. I’m definitely still considering going to grad school and going on for a master’s in mechanical engineering, possibly sometime in the future.”
As a message for other current and incoming students, Chang advises that they take advantage of the wide range of extracurricular opportunities in the College of Engineering.
“I feel like a lot of us work really hard on academics, but lose out on the extracurricular portion,” Chang said. “I know there’s a core group of really active students, but I feel like that should expand, because the experience I’ve had with the combination of doing well in academics and also doing well in extracurriculars has been just incredible for me. I would really make that a challenge to other students, to get more involved and to expand their horizons. The opportunity is there; do it.”