Materials Science & Engineering Department Webinar

So I'm turning it off and on. It doesn't seem to be.

Where are you slides?

They were literally originally here. I'm going to log back out real quick and back in.

Can you unshare your screen?

You're scared.

Can I unstear my screen? I can.

Those are, yeah. Now the slides are there.

Perfect.

Now if I just click on it, yeah the slides are changing. OK, that works.

All right, perfect. Excellent. So 7:00 now. So we should start seeing our participants flowing in any moment.

I'll do the introduction and then I'll hand it over to you as well.

So let's see where are our participants.

So Finn and Sarah, can you guys see the slides that are?

Coming up or just the main slide?

Just the main slide.

OK, so you can't see the next?

And I see. I see all your slides.

OK, but I think that may be a permissions thing, so that's why I was asking the two of them.

That's odd and the fin is not in the participants list.

OK, I don't see.

I have Fin in there, Sarah, Finn, yourself and me, and I'm not sure where our people are.

So.

When when I look at the participants list, it says 4 participants and it lists three people. I don't know, OK?

Yeah, it says 4. And usually once these things start up, all of our participants should be flowing in.

So I'm not sure why they're not because what they they all received a link to sign up.

And I'm not sure why they're not flowing in here.

This is very weird.

This is very, very strange.

Hey Randy, I think you have to hit the live button in the top right.

But I need the uh, live button is not working. Then I found if I close the window and came back then it activated it.

OK, we have a bunch of.

Folks ready.

So hello everyone. Can you guys hear us? Maybe put something into the chat?

As you can see, we're contending with some technical difficulties. This is the first time the materials department is running by MNR like this.

Can anybody indicate if they are? Maybe put something into the chat?

Thank you, Franklin.

So just bear with us for just a couple of minutes. We have somebody from admissions who's, uh umm.

Who's gonna work with us?

But she's here, and she's on, actually, so maybe we should just get started.

We want to use this time as efficiently as possible.

And so we can just get started with this. I was hoping that there might be direct interactions with folks but that may not be the case. Randy, do you know if, if the folks who are on around?

Can you hear me?

There's around seven. Yeah, we can hear you.

OK, so I'm back on now. So what I'd like to do is let folks know that are in the presentation here is that they can post their questions into the chat box or the question box and any one of us that have access to those will be able to answer those questions live.

All right. So their videos won't come on, basically.

Correct. Their videos will not come on and they will not be able to actually verbally ask questions. They can ask those in chat and I will answer anything admissions related. And Finn and Sarah, if you can answer anything related to material science and engineering, that would be wonderful.

You're welcome.

All right. So let's get started then. Thanks, Randy. I'm glad to see that, that folks are able to are able to access the chat. Well, at least Franklin is able to access the chat.

I'm Chaitanya Ulal. I'm an Associate professor of Material Science and engineering here at RPI. I let Finn and Sarah, who are students at RPI, introduce themselves, and then we can get started.

Yeah, I'll. Yeah, I'll go first if that's cool. Sarah. Yeah. My name's Finn and I'm a I'm a senior student in the materials department and this is my last semester, so I'm just just wrapping things up now.

Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm a junior in the materials department.

Excellent, good. So what we have planned is a set of really quick slides that introduce material science and engineering because one of the objectives of this webinar was to highlight material science and engineering specifically. So we're kind of assuming a little bit that the folks who are attending are specifically interested in engineering and have maybe some idea of material science. But even if you don't, the objective was to broadly or briefly introduce.

The the the department in particular and to sort of place it within the context of questions that we are often asked.

That we are often asked about the department in terms of what are the subjects that students who are in high school tend to enjoy doing when they in terms of the students who end up doing well in our department, the job opportunities, what we prepare students for and things like that. And in particular one of the things that we wanted to emphasize.

Is just the opportunities that it opens up because.

For better or for worse this area is one of the our department is one of the better kept secrets of of the engineering school. So broadly material science and engineering deals with is a branch of engineering that deals with.

In some sense, combining physics.

And chemistry. Aspects of physics and chemistry.

With fundamentals of engineering within the context of trying to create new materials and we do this particularly within the context of trying to control the structure of materials, understanding and characterizing the structure of materials, how we process them and trying to create new materials that are transformative in terms of their impacts of society, right. So one of the the typical things that you will do when you.

Here when materials engineers introduce materials is you hear about how structure is very important and how it is correlated to properties, and how we in turn control materials processing to control those structures. That can sound a little academic and esoteric, but this has implications for a whole set of fields, right? So the students that.

We tend to attract our students who like physics and chemistry and enjoy engineering. They tend to be good at math but don't want to spend all their time doing, I don't know, number theory or something just to pick on something random, right? The idea essentially is that.

A lot of what materials engineering involves involves aspects, fundamental aspects of physics and chemistry and engineering and the intersection of that and applying these concepts to a whole range of topics. And so our students get prepared for a very wide range of areas that they can influence. So our students will end up going into companies that regularly hire Mechanical Engineers, civil engineers, places that are focused on biomedical.

Engineering products, aerospace, the aerospace industry, the nuclear industry will hire our students. A lot of our students get, our students also get training in the electronic and optical properties of materials And so they are ready to go into the semiconductor industry as well, right. So broadly, if you look at the coursework that students do, this is a distillation of the core of what our department teaches the students, now the full curriculum at RBI.

For a typical.

Undergraduate degree is on the order of 128 credits or so. So a typical semester would be 16 credits, 4 courses or 4 credits each, and.

There will be. All of the engineering majors are going to have.

A range of things that you are required to study and this is will not sound surprising to you, right? So there are some requirements related to humanities, the science is some core engineering courses and things like that. But the topics that are listed on this particular slide.

Structure of materials. Understanding how energy interacts and determines how materials behave, what the properties of materials are, and how that relates to structure. As I mentioned earlier, this is a fundamental question in materials manufacturing. Aspects of creating materials, trying to model materials in a way that captures the essential physics of how they behave, and then of course the design and application of these materials.

RPI has exceptional resources in terms of being able to.

Train our students from a broad engineering perspective and particularly in the material sciences. We draw on our excellent computational resources, our resources in terms of characterization, in terms of some of the microscopes that we have, electron microscopes, high end optical microscopes.

Surface characterization methods, we also leverage a lot of the core facilities that are there in the school of engineering like the excellent manufacturing capabilities available in the manufacturing innovation labs.

We have numerous faculty labs where students can do Urps and get further experience into in terms of connecting with the material that they're learning in classes. And there are also other very important deep learning opportunities for the students. For example, we have.

At RBI specifically, a student professional group known as Material Advantage that we're very proud of, Finn happens to be a previous president of that group.

And they are very active and they do a lot of things related to the promotion of people knowing about material science in particular.

In addition to this, we are a school that does a lot of research, and this is very much true of the material science department as well. And we have faculty spanning the range of things that material science, that material science touches. So when you have, when you have a student who's interested in energy and sustainability, those are aspects that students can learn about. For example, Sarah can actually tell you a little bit about her own research in batteries. Or we could talk about.

Next generation computing and semiconductors in these areas. Finn is doing research in Professor Daniel Gaul's lab and he works on next generation semiconductors. We have students who are interested in health and sustainability. There's a whole range of I could just go through that list and and we could continuously talk about the research that is done in RPI. The undergraduate students here are uniquely positioned, particularly in our department because we are a slightly smaller department in terms of the number of students we have.

Our students are very uniquely positioned to take advantage of the research opportunities that are available to them and this then deepens their appreciation and learning from the perspective of.

Of what they do during their time at RPI. Finally, I'd like to just end on something that's likely to be of a lot of interest to the parents and probably the students as well, which is where our students end up, right? And you'll see that a lot of I've just picked a random list of some of the companies that are recent graduates have ended up at right. And if you look at these, some of these, some of these are famous names of companies.

And you will see that they map quite well with some of the topics, the, the broad range of topics that I was discussing, right.

Students often have this notion that if they're interested in aerospace or they're interested in health, that they specifically have to go to the biomedical engineering department or the aerospace department, right? But the material science degree will actually give you training that gives you a pick amongst all these range of disciplines because all of these companies need materials engineers. It doesn't mean that they don't need electrical engineers or chemical engineers. They do, but they also need materials engineers.

And very few students actually know and recognize that materials engineering pays such a pivotal role in in these companies that they might otherwise be very interested in. So the objective was more to answer questions here and so.

I'll end talking about these slides at the moment and we'll open up for questions if that's OK. Randy, does that make sense?

Is there something specific you had in mind?

Yeah, and that's too many questions currently in the questions or chat box.

That that just might be because. SO folks, if you have any questions, particularly students who are eager to hear from you, we can't know who's a student and who's a parent. But if you let us know, that might help us within the context of answering things. But it may also be less relevant. So just go ahead and ask. Put your questions into the chat, or there's a separate.

So the first question that we have is from Audrey Sugar. How difficult is it to get internships in material science and engineering?

Actually, why don't we hear from the students? I think there are best representatives of their experience in in those in those perspectives.

Umm, Finn. Sarah, why don't you go ahead?

Yes, Sarah, do you want to go first?

I had a relatively easy find time finding an internship. It just so happened that I was the only one who applied to my internship, which is kind of helpful in getting it. But the education I received here definitely.

Made me a promising candidate, even though I was the only applicant. The career fair that they have set you up really well for that. There's a lot of.

Materials engineering companies that come and.

Since we're our major is so applicable to other industries, you can really go to like a lot of the different tables and they'll be interested in taking your resume and hearing hearing about you.

Yeah, that's true. I had a similar experience. So I've had a Co-op at at GE. So I've worked there for six months and then my junior year I worked at a Global Foundries, which is a semiconductor company. So like 2 very different fields, right? I went from like the energy industry to semiconductors and yeah, just like Sarah's Pretty easy for me to find these because the applicant pool is just so much smaller for materials engineers compared to like if you're a mechanical engineer.

You know, there there's probably like.

10s of thousands, if not more Mechanical Engineers around the country applying these roles. And since materials science and engineering is so much smaller, you're just, I think, way more likely to get one of these positions. And yeah, you can go into so many different fields with this degree.

So this is a follow up question from Audrey saying does RP's math side program require undergrads to choose a concentration in the subject and if so, what year?

Actually, so if you don't mind, I'm gonna fill that question and then we can get input from Finn and Sarah as well. In terms of our curriculum, you can actually get a good idea of what our curriculum is by going to catalog.rpi.edu and if you go under departments and click on on the Materials Engineering program, you'll get what is the recommended course of study for the course.

We don't have a requirement that you pick a concentration. The structure that we have is apart from the humanities courses, there's certain, as I mentioned earlier, there's around 2024 credits or so that are required to be done in the humanities. There's a certain number of credits to do math and science and core engineering topics. And then we also have a certain number of free electives. I know I haven't answered your question as yet. I'm sort of describing the general aspect of of the way most programs are structured.

Within the core credits that you have to do, we have certain number of courses that are that we expect all of our students to take. We consider this to be central or as the name suggests, core courses that are just fundamental to the making of any materials engineers. As I listed earlier, some of them include.

Topics like structure, thermodynamics, kinetics, properties, manufacturing.

Simulations, Design. These are core courses that we require. We also have the option where students can further deepen their knowledge in particular areas of their choice. This typically happens in the junior and senior years. We have two courses that you are required to take that are electives. You can choose what those electives are and you can choose from a range of electives, right? There are electives related to soft matter. There are electives related to.

Semiconductor processing, the reluctance related to glass, a whole range of a whole range of topics that that you could pick from. You also have three electives, the three three electives that you could further pick from that would allow you to deepen your concentration. You can do undergraduate research that would serve as some of your electives. So the short answer to your question is we don't require a concentration specifically in terms of particular topic, but you do end up in addition to the core curriculum that you have, you do end up taking.

Some electives that are specifically related to your area of interest.

You are not restricted within those electives to choose two things that are paired together, for example, in any way. You can pick and choose within those electives in the way that you want. I hope that answers your question.

And those electives typically happen, although you could choose to do them earlier if you wanted to.

In general, students tend to do them in their junior and senior years. Do you folks have anything to add?

Uh, yeah. I guess like Professor Law was saying, you don't really pick a concentration, but you can definitely tailor your electives. And also, if you decide you want to get into undergraduate research, you can really tailor those to what you're interested in. So yeah, I'm pretty interested in semiconductors and computer hardware, so I took a course on thin films, which is like how they lay down really thin layers of electronic materials.

And then I ended up doing research on this too, for the past three semesters, And it ultimately, like, pushed me in the direction of wanting to go into grad school. But you know, even if you're like, not sure if you want to, like, do more school after like, you start undergrad. I know it's like a scary concept, like being in school for so long. These undergrad research opportunities stand up, make you stand out to employers because you're working on kind of like an independent project. And it shows that you know how to, like, apply the things you're learning in class, right. Because.

When you get your first internship or first industry experience, you're really not going to be using a lot of the concepts you learn in class, and you'll be learning like on the job, like these new kinds of.

Skills, I guess. And that's exactly what undergrad research does. You're you're learning how to, like, work with your hands, how to build things, how to record data, and that'll make you stand out as a a really good candidate.

Adobe has a question that says what has been your favorite part of the materials engineering program? What is the most interesting thing you've done in your classes? I presume that's directed at Sarah and not me, so please go ahead either of you first.

So who wants to go first?

My favorite part is the program was probably the.

A lot of the classes are have lab elements too, which is I find really interesting that I took mechanical properties over the summer and we had and also.

Material. I forget what the name was, but it was a lab course where we learned.

Are you talking about the skills task?

How to prepare metal sandals, yeah, material skills, that's it. That was really valuable just for hands on experience. Same with the mechanical properties lab, which yeah, I think the hands on programs, the the hands on labs and stuff that we get through this program have been really valuable.

Yeah, I guess one of the one cool class we also take is called computational materials design. So we look at material simulations and.

Yet we got to learn how to use Linux, which I wasn't familiar with, but now I could like say that I know how to do that and I also learned a little bit of programming. It's not super, super heavy on the programming, but you know, we we can simulate a lot of like interesting phenomena like something called molecular dynamics. We we look at like we applied Newton's second law in between a bunch of particles. And you can kind of see how that evolves as a function of time. And even though that wasn't like a physical experiment, I thought it was pretty cool. And we also got to see how you can make.

Things like band structures, which are used for looking at electronic properties, which is really applicable to semiconductors. And I kind of learned how they that you can use these like simulations and stack them up against like real life experiments and kind of compare them to one another. And you can use these simulations to yeah, kind of get an idea of like which direction of you want to go. And like you can find the the best types of materials to synthesize. So you're not just like throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold on, you know, you're like actually going.

In a good direction.

All right. The next question is from Peter.

And the question is, how valuable did the students find the RPI arch program?

You want to go, Sarah?

Sure. So Overarchers, that summer of classes is when I took the mechanical properties and also the skills class that I was talking about. The schedule that they set you up for over the summer gives you those time blocks to actually fit in those four hour laps. It's a little time consuming, but the experience was pretty valuable in my learning.

Yeah, and for me, I opted to get out of the arch and I did that like 6 month experience at General Electric. I worked on thermal barrier coatings which are like high temperature ceramics. They're used in gas turbines because the insides of these like combustion engines reach like greater than 3000°C. So really extreme environments. They're also applicable in like the aerospace industry, like in rocket thrusters and and things like that.

But from what I've heard from my friends who did do the Arch, you know, our department's already very small. And when you do the arch, you're just pretty much taking almost like explicitly materials classes. So you get it, like brings your cohort really close together and you like, form very strong friendships. And even though I didn't do the arch, I can still say that, you know, I I made some lifelong friends in the department, you know, for the past, like probably a year and a half, two years. A lot of my classes have had the same students. So, you know, at the beginning.

Of my studies, like the first two years, I kind of like got to branch out and meet people from all these different fields. And then, you know, as as I got older, I was able to work with a lot of the same people on group projects. And you know, we got into a rhythm and going from class to class, it felt like, you know, not too scary. Like, you know, we can do this. We've done it before. We've worked together. And sorry, I'm kind of straying away from the question, but I think that's one of the pros of our department as well. And and the arch will help you, help bring you closer together if you do take these summer classes.

So I think just from the experience that you just heard, I know that question was posed to the students, but I just want to connect to some things that was that is that connects across the seemingly different experiences because Sarah did to the arch and and Finn didn't. And this emphasizes that we have a certain amount of that we do have flexibility in our program. The motivation with which our department has adopted the ARCH program is that by moving up that semester into that summer.

The students are better positioned to get internships and coops that through the classes that they have done, particularly at that stage.

And the classes that they we've designed it such that the classes that they take during that summer.

Are classes that they would otherwise have taken later and now they're in a position to get internships and co-ops through for example, doing mechanical properties and skills and some of the other classes that that they would already have completed. So if there are students like in Finn's case where they go out and find an internship or they find a research experience that's sponsored by the NSF or whatever, it is right if they find a valuable deep learning experience.

That is going to achieve what the arch seeks to achieve. Then they don't have to do the arch right, They can opt out of it. They have to file some paperwork and things like that which Finn obviously did. But you have that option right? And the intent in some sense of that arch aspect is reflected in both what Sarah said in terms of her doing that particular program and finding those courses valuable, and Finn's experience where he found something before he did the Arch. And so he just went on to do that internship.

And it achieved the same ends, and so he didn't have to do the arch program.

Was coming. I don't have any. Here's another one. Put this one through.

So, Audrey asks, what do you think is RPI's strongest area of Mathsai? Mechanology. Electronic materials? Composites. Something else?

All of the above.

We have. I don't know.

Maybe we can get three opinions on this. I'd say we have a range of faculty across a lot of the disciplines. I would say particular areas of strength definitely are electronic materials.

Glass.

UMM and computational materials.

These three aspects.

We really stand out in because of a unique combination of, I don't know, combination of historical aspects as well as.

Resources and things like that. For example, in the case of computational materials, we have traditionally benefited from access to super computing resources.

That other universities can only dream of.

We now have coming to our campus a quantum computer. How that exactly is gonna shake out in terms of the manner in which it is applied within the context of?

The research questions that we ask is something that is actively being explored as we speak, right? So we have students and faculty who are.

Getting access to this new quantum computer and.

Are trying to explore what it is that they can. What is the nature of the questions that they can answer with this unique tool that one of the first.

We are, Excuse me.

We are basically probably the first university to have a quantum computer, maybe on campus.

And.

These resources like this, I think, position us particularly in a way that makes these particular areas to be even stronger.

The way I'm framing it is in a manner to suggest that we do have strengths in other areas as well. But you since you particularly asked about what is our strongest area, I would say probably electronic materials class and computational based materials are where we have particularly unique combinations of.

Faculty, resources and a couple of other things coming together that really make.

Our strengths in those areas stand out. We are strong in other areas.

RPI is a school that is one of the oldest metallurgy departments in the nation.

Umm. And we have a strong history of that. There are a lot of.

Developments that happened in metallurgy that happened at RBI and that tradition is continued with the faculty that we have here. We have strong ties on the polymers and biomedical side. We now have a tie up at at RPI with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and and some of our faculty are have projects with them. So we have strengths very much on.

In other areas as well. But since you specifically asked about what are particular strengths are, I'd say those three things that I mentioned. Fin, Sarah, any other things you want to chime in on?

All good. I just want to say, I mean actually speaking in some ways to something that I didn't immediately mention, which is an area that Sarah works on, which connects with the question already that you asked.

It doesn't immediately connect to the strongest area, where it connects to the nature of the setup. At RPI we are a strong engineering school, Cheliyama Rathi and I like being here, so I'm going to say that.

But I think one of the unique aspects is just the size of the school. We're not so small that we're too small, and we're not so large that you just get lost. So what tends to happen is that the walls between the departments tend to be particularly low. And so if there's a student who's interested in doing something that they feel crosses the department boundaries, for example, Sarah does her research and she can speak to it.

Within this context as well.

Does her research in the mechanical engineering department, but she works with a professor who works on batteries, and he works on aspects that overlap extremely heavily with the material side right.

And clearly, I mean, Sarah can speak to it actually. Why don't you talk a little bit about that particular aspect because I think.

It in terms of what the strengths are, the primary strengths are that were referred to.

It sort of that question in some ways might unwittingly.

Over shadow some of the other aspects that are important, for example, sort of the interdisciplinary nature of the of the work that the that the undergraduate students have access to. So Sarah, why don't you answer that question, Just speak to that briefly and then we can answer Franklin's question.

Yeah, so when I was looking for undergrad research opportunities, I knew I specifically wanted to do batteries. So I kind of just searched through the professors on their website. I wasn't specifically looking in the math side department, I was just specifically looking for the topic of batteries. And I found my current research advisor. He focuses on solid-state batteries, and it turns out that area is I do a lot of materials synthesis and characterization, which fits in perfectly with my major. So it's a really good combination there.

All right, so Franklin has a question about changing majors.

Sarah, did you come in? Undeclared?

Yeah, I came in undeclared.

And Finn, you chose materials, right?

All right. So maybe I'll just provide a little bit of data 1st and then maybe Sarah can speak to that also because she came in undeclared. So when we refer to undeclared, RBI has the option that you can come in as an engineering major, but you don't have to pick your department, so you don't have to pick specifically the major that you're gonna do.

Immediately and you have a certain amount of time. Typically students take within the first three semesters if you haven't.

Pick by your 4th semester, you start getting repeated emails from the administration asking you how things are going and whether you've come to a decision, but clearly the objective is that you get to choose 25 at some point. Several years ago I looked at these numbers and I had the impression that 25% or so of the incoming engineering majors are undeclared and a good, healthy, maybe 20% or so independent of the undeclared engineering majors.

Shift their engineering majors, sometimes students. We fully recognize that students coming in don't like might have a particular conception of what they enjoy doing. And once they come here, their experiences here can can deepen their understanding of what is at the intersection of three things that are important, what they're good at, what they like to do, and where opportunity lies, and so as to assess these aspects.

They change their minds and it's clearly sort of reflected in the question that's been asked, right?

And so this is something that RPI actively supports. You don't need to do very much, it's just a simple form to enter and you can change your major, right?

There are no rules about, oh, this department has too many people. If you want to study something, you get to study it. As simple as that.

So Sarah, do you want to speak briefly to sort of your thought process of how you pick materials after coming in as an undeclared major?

Yeah, so I came in at the code and I took. There's a bunch of one credit intro classes for different engineering majors, so I specifically took the.

Engineer, Chemical engineering and materials engineering intro courses. There's also a broad course that they make you take if you're undeclared engineering that just like every single week is like a seminar on a different type of engineering. So that was super helpful, especially if you had no idea what you wanted to do. I was debating between Chemi and Materials though, so those were my 2 main focuses, which I chose those two classes, but the intro classes that you start out with your freshman year, like the chemistry one, physics one, all that stuff, it translates really well between the different majors. So if you're picking within those first two years.

It's relatively easy just to transition into whatever major you decide on.

Play.

All right, so we have a question from Toby. UH, how heavy is the coursework? Homework loaded RBI? Have you had time to branch out into different miners or you kept busy with your major courses? So I believe that's more a question for Finn and Sarah.

Yeah, so I don't have a minor, but you you don't not all students do minors. You have to do a Haas pathway though, which is like a humanities arts and social science. So for mine I did, I did philosophy, you know, not very, not very similar to materials, but I really enjoyed those courses.

Kind of let me like branch outside of like what I was typically doing and you know you also have free electives too. So you're not just restricted to this pathway.

And I believe it's also possible to change your pathway like some of the courses overlap with one another with like requirements wise. But if you do want to get a minor, I believe it's only an additional like one or two courses. So really not that much of A of a barrier to get over. But yeah as far as course course load goes.

You know, I think it is what you make of it. I've had a lot of free time to do things that I like, like I I still make sure I like go. I go to the gym every day.

Most days during the week I'll I'll go hiking on the weekends. Like I like to set up my hammock around campus when it's nice out and just like chill in the sun. So it's not like we're we're working all the time. But you know if you want to go and try and be a a four oh student, like maybe that's what it takes. You can do that. But you know it's important to balance your mental health. And you know you might, you might see online if you go on like the RPI subreddit or something, you'll see some people being negative there And that's because it's kind of like it's like a place for people to vent and complain. But you know, I have, I have a lot of friends here.

Who are are pretty happy with the experience and you know, there's like plenty of social circles to get involved with lots of different clubs and I'm not in like a fraternity or anything, but I think a lot of students here are. So if that's something that you want to get into, that's definitely a possibility too.

He had a girl.

Sorry.

Actually, before Sarah takes on.

I just wanted to. Finn, you're in a bunch of.

Like things, right? You're in MA, you're in, Crew, you're in. You're like helping with the Boys and Girls Club of Troy. Like, I think there's at least like 6 things that I can think of that you're doing right. So do you want to speak to that briefly because.

Just in some sense, it gives the the folks who are online an idea of, and this is true of Sarah as well, right? But maybe before, just before you complete your answer, maybe you could speak to that briefly because in some sense it, it speaks to what is the subject of the question there, right? Is are there other experiences that you've taken on and how have they balanced with your coursework and how have they informed your development as a student?

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, like professor who lost that. I've been involved with a lot of different clubs, like I've been on the Crew team for a few few years and yeah, we'll go rowing out on like the Hudson River. And I haven't been on the competitive part of it, but you know, they they do like they row against other schools. You know, it's not like AD one sport or anything, it's more of a club sport, but it's like a really tight knit group of friends. They have a lot of social gatherings.

And definitely like a pretty scenic type of way to get involved, like with nature, like you to wake up early but.

Get you in shape and you know, being like physically active helps, like, you know, to help you do well in school too. And I've also done like a lot of volunteering at the the Boys and Girls Club in Troy. That's kind of through my club called Material Advantage.

So this is like a good way to get involved with the community. I did a little bit of volunteering in high school and I and I enjoyed it, so I continued doing it here.

And yeah, it's like, it's pretty rewarding. I know. It's like, it can be like a like, it's like what it is. It is what you make of it, right? Like you can make it a time sink if you want. Or you could just do like, you know, do it every other week or do it once a month and.

Yeah, it's.

It has like other benefits too, right? Like you, you could do these types of things just to like throw it on your resume.

But you know, what's the fun in that? There's definitely like a nice aspect to helping people out, especially around Troy where some families come from like underprivileged communities or you know, they like grew up without like a lot of financial resources. You could like kind of show them like interesting parts of engineering or like STEM in general, I guess, and and kind of show them, you know, they're more career paths too, just like going into like music production or or sports, which is like what a lot of.

Students from these backgrounds like, think that that's like how that's how you make money. But you can go for like, you know, like like all of you are considering school right now, right? It's a good path to go down. It's a very, very reliable way to to make yourself a living and ensure you live like a.

A fruitful life. Yeah, that. Yeah. That's all I have to say.

Sarah.

Oh yeah, I would agree with that. I'm in a service return, a gender inclusive service returning right now. So we do a lot of community service and try. Yesterday we LED an Easter egg hunt and a local park and just to see the community come together like that, it was really nice.

Also, I mean through that it's definitely a break from school work. Like going back to the question, there is time for other priorities that you may have like friends. All of my friends, most of my friends come from that group. So prioritizing that is really important to me in addition to my school work.

Second part of that question was can you branch out into different minors? I'm doing a chemistry minor which is related to materials, so there is some overlap in the classes, but I've had to do a few additional classes. You'll find that with a lot of different minors. Finn mentioned the pathways as well. You did mention that you can switch your pathway.

Your humanities pathway. I actually switched mine a couple weeks ago. There is a lot of overlap in the classes.

Something what happened with my schedule that I just needed to do a sudden switch. I have a year left of school and I had to switch my pathway, but the overlap really helped out. I mean, we'll only have to take one class to finish, so it'll be no problem there. So yeah, there's definitely time for other stuff and other minors and other coursework. Whatever interests you.

So I just wanted to address a couple of things that maybe seemingly administrative and sort of connect with the final question that's been not the final question but the but the but the most recent question that's been posed in terms of double majoring and connect that with the question about minors, not so much in terms of the times and and the course and the course workload as because the students have already because Finn and and Sarah have already spoken to that.

But just I wanted to mention two aspects. The 1st is what the options are in terms of.

Doing other majors.

There's a There's a scale over which you can.

Take that commitment. So at one extreme, you could say you're going to get a double major where you get 2°. So let's say you double major in materials and mechanical engineering or materials and biomedical engineering, right?

Or materials and physics even, right?

All of which would make sense within a variety of career path related context. You could choose to do that. That's a double major. More often than that, students end up choosing what is known as a dual, where you don't end up with two degrees but you end up with just one degree. And the departments have come to an agreement on certain courses that they consider to be sufficiently overlapped that. Let's say you take.

A foundational materials class in the materials department and the Biomedical engineering department, which has a materials concentration.

Also requires a materials engineering class, right? So they teach their own engineering class within the context of biomaterials. But materials has its own biomaterials class as well as fundamental materials class, and they will recognize that these things overlap. And so they will not expect you to do both those things which you would have needed to do if you were getting the double degree. But a dual degree will allow you to take a reduced set of courses in recognition of some of the overlaps that are taking place. You have to work with the degree clearance officers.

Of the, umm of the respective departments. And then with this reduced set of courses that intersects between the two departments, you can get a dual degree. So there's a double degree. There's a dual degree, and the slightly more reduced form of this would be to take a minor. A minor involves, as you folks probably know, involves around. Typically involves around 16 credits of work. So that's four four credit courses related to a particular area of interest.

So you might be in materials and do a minor in electronic materials or semiconductor materials or biomedical materials and health or whatever it is that you.

Or even in psychology or economics or anything like that. And the fact that you have to do a certain number of past courses, a certain number of science and engineering courses, that you have, the freedom for free electives allows you to already build towards that minor. And so when the students refer to things like, well, taking the additional one or two courses is not such a barrier, They are inherently referring to the fact that they've already taken a couple of courses.

By virtue of the curriculum that they're already going through.

So adding on those one or two courses to complete the minor is usually not that big a stretch.

On a related note, I want to mention that RBI accepts up to 32 credits of transfer credit, and this can significantly open up the opportunities you can have in terms of the curriculum that you do at RPI and the way you structure your curriculum. So I don't know, Sarah Finn, did you guys bring in a lot of AP or anything like that?

So that that varies, right? Students will sometimes come in with AP. Some students will do a course or to add a Community College in the summer before they come to RPI, right? Maybe you do Physics one or calculus one or something like that at the Community College you come in and then you've created headroom for yourself. You can do up to 32 credits, which is nearly a whole year. You can graduate earlier. Make your parents happy. Make your financial advisors happier also, probably.

But other people will use this in a variety of ways, right? Students will do more research.

Because that opens up opportunities for them. Co-ops, internships, studying abroad. RBI has opportunities for students to we have specific arrangements with a certain number of universities where you continue to have your home base in RBI, where you're paying tuition here, but then you can go abroad and do an exchange program somewhere else. All of these start to become options, particularly if you have.

If you have brought in some headroom for yourself, either through APE and each of these things, depending on the curriculum that you're doing, if you're doing IB or various other things, there are various ways to approach this. And the reason I'm mentioning this is sort of within the context of the broader question of the double degree, the dual degree and the minor, right?

It is very feasible to do these things within the context of, even if you don't bring in a lot of transfer credit, but you will significantly make it easier on yourself if you do bring in that transfer credit.

So I just want to mention that as well.

I think that's pretty much it for our questions. I mean we have time for maybe one last question. If not, this session has been recorded. So if anybody would like a copy of it, they can reach out to admissions@rpi.edu and we will send that to them. But if there are no more questions, I want to thank our panelists, Dr. Ulal as well our students for being here tonight and sitting in on this presentation and answering all these wonderful questions. Is there any way that?

These prospective students can reach out if they have any further questions.

Future.

Sure, I'm happy to. If you go to the MSC web page, you'll find my e-mail there. But my e-mail is my last name and my first initial, so that's ULLAL c@rpi.edu. And if you have any questions related to our department or program, I'm happy to address them.

And yeah, we'd love to. We'd love to hear from you especially because as I mentioned at the top of this webinar, there's not a lot of students who know and are aware about the opportunities and materials and so.

When we come across a student who is aware, we know that's an informed student and so we're always happy to.

To interact with students who have questions about our program, and you can reach out as our Finn and Sarah put their emails in the in the chat as well.

So we'll be happy to to engage with you. Franklin has a question. If I bring in trans credits to AP, would I still be able to take the courses associated with that AP, still have the credits count?

For example, if I took AB Calc AP, would I still be able to take Calc One again and have those credits gone for anything? My sense actually, Randy, do you have a more definite answer? My sense is that if you are transferring in, you can't double count it.

So if you're transferring in something, then you can't take Calc One as well as transfer it in. So you have to do one of one.

Yeah.

Right. So it's one or the other. Either you get credit for the AP Calc four or five, an AP Calc AB or BC or you take Calc 1.

Yeah. And in general, our advice from just looking at the data is that students who have taken AP, we recommend that they go on to the next higher course and take advantage of the AP and not redo the course Again. In general, students who've taken AP for Calc One, for example, who take Calc 2, usually get a decent grade of B or A higher in that there's a strong correlation between students doing.

Well, and having AP dim, right so.

It's not a guarantee, so as a consequence, having looked at the data in general, we suggest that.

The that the student basically go on to the next logical sequence, right? Because then they can benefit from the time that they're gaining, right? If you're coming in and you're trying to double count, first of all they don't allow it. And second of all, if you have the AP, the suggestion is that you take advantage of it because it'll do two things. Most likely you will do well in the next course and just based on historical and statistical trends, right?

And the second thing is it'll allow you to take advantage of the momentum that you get right. You'll be able to do other things like research or take take other deeper learning opportunities that you will significantly benefit from. So in general, we advise you to take advantage of your AP.

Right.

They also have the option too. If they're coming in with a certain number of credits and they want to accelerate their degree, they can stick around and get their master's degree of one extra year of study and start taking those master level courses within their senior year. And one of the things that we're offering is to reduce.

Amount on the actual tuition benefit of up to 50%, so sticking around for that master's degree could be very beneficial for those that want to be able to come in with those points.

Right. That's a that's a really good point. And maybe in the last two minutes of it, maybe I can just take one of those minutes to just mention that particular program. It's called the four term program. And very often students who are thinking about a double major will actually choose to do the core term degree where they will major in a particular discipline and do a master's in another discipline. So students will sometimes.

Do an undergraduate degree in Biomedical engineering and then do their master's in materials. Or you could switch it the other way around as well, right? And so the idea is that.

Especially if you're coming to the AP and you're on a slightly more accelerated program, then you can graduate in four years with the same financial package that you have.

And apply that to a master's degree and graduate in four years with a master's.

Some students, even if they don't come in with AB, they tend they choose their option because they seek to get.

Deeper learning in a particular concentrated area and so you might do your four years and then get the the the core term after which works as well. It's just that it will take slightly longer but you still get the benefit of the of the financial aid packaging package sort of still being valid.

All right. So, Randy, I don't know if that's the wrap of the question.

For our questions, I do.

I do want to thank everyone who was able to come tonight to this presentation and again, we really appreciate your time.

And we'll wrap it up at this point and I hope everyone has a great evening.

All right. Thank you, folks.

Thanks, Bobby.

Thanks, Vince and Sarah. Thanks, Randy.

Thank you.