Alex Harrison is an M.Eng student now. As a Clemson undergraduate, she was one of those students who liked to keep many balls in the air at work and at play. However, Alex’s work and classroom activities had an impact on many whose needs would otherwise not have been met. She worked, for example, for two years in various jobs for the college’s Programs for Educational Enrichment and Retention (PEER) and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), programs dedicated to educating, recruiting, and retaining underrepresented populations in STEM fields through mentoring, academic coaching, counseling, and academic enrichment. Alex was a PEER/WISE Summer Camp counselor, a WISE mentor and a WISE tutor. She also worked for Dominica, directing a multidisciplinary class in engineering projects in a developing country.
Much of Alex’s coursework included designing medical devices with clinical partners, performing FDA regulatory research, market analysis, rendering prototypes in SolidWorks, and getting a provisional patent. Alex said, “As part of a Global Health Design Creative Inquiry course, our team worked to design a breast pump to achieve 3 goals: To design a pump that could be used in both rural and urban settings of Tanzania, to incorporate a method to kill HIV to prevent transmission from mother to child, to store breast milk without refrigeration by killing the harmful bacteria that cause milk to sour. I am very passionate about global health and engagement.”
“During my senior year,” Alex noted, “senior design courses covered the entire process of medical device design. Working closely with a surgeon helped us prototype our designed device. And, it solidified my career goals for bioengineering and device design. My ultimate professional goal is to one day work in industry to design and produce medical devices to be used in the global health community.”
Asked about her choice of M.Eng, Alex said, “Being an M.Eng student so far has been an invaluable experience. It has taught me prominent skill sets that industry specifically looks for in potential candidates. It has allowed me to build off my knowledge in undergrad and further understand how a medical device business runs, how to build my own start-up business around a medical device, and even dives deep into the FDA regulatory process. That is why I chose M.Eng. It is more of a hands-on, project-based learning style rather than just a series of tests. The program is also smaller (fewer students) than other graduate programs, which allows us more individualized learning and to become closer with classmates.”
