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February 7, 2005 Vol. 76,
no. 4S
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| FORMER
LAWMAN: MSE Ph.D. candidate Matt Sherburne
(B.S. '99 MSE) worked as a deputy sheriff for Sacramento County
before deciding to become an engineer. Sherburne says, "I've
always built things or torn them apart to see how they work." |
MSE
student trades sheriff's badge for lab coat and the engineering
life
In his old life, MSE Ph.D.
student Matt Sherburne carried a gun. As a deputy sheriff for Sacramento
County, he not only packed a Sig Sauer 45, but chased people over fences,
busted drug dealers, and ran a surveillance unit. He pulled bodies out
of wrecked cars and helped women leave abusive homes. But in his 13
years at the sheriff's department, he never touched a donut, he
says laughing.
Over the last seven years, Sherburne has transformed himself from deputy
sheriff to Berkeley engineer. He now works on mechanical properties
of metals and expects to finish his doctorate next May. It's an
uncommon journey that Sherburne credits to allowing himself to go where
the wind blows. "My whole life is just a string of random incidents,"
he says.
The random incident that brought Sherburne to campus was a bicycle.
In 1995, he was attending American River College in Sacramento, working
on a business degree while moonlighting at the sheriff's department.
An avid biker, Sherburne rode to class every day. As he tells it, the
president of the college's ASME chapter (American Society of Mechanical
Engineers) would try to beat him to campus by car.
One day, Sherburne's bike broke down, and, while he was fixing
it, the ASME president stopped and asked if Sherburne would be interested
in riding the human-powered vehicle he was working on. The next thing
he knew, Sherburne was not only piloting the vehicle, but giving them
suggestions on how to improve it. "People kept saying, 'You're
really good at this.' The next semester I took engineering calculus
instead of business calculus. The semester after that, I switched to
engineering."
When he told his deputy buddies he'd gotten into Berkeley and was
transferring, they cheered him on, Sherburne says. That was 1996. But
he couldn't leave the cop life behind. As a Cal undergraduate,
Sherburne drove to Sacramento every other weekend to work as a reserve
deputy sheriff. In 1999, he completed his bachelor of science with a
double major in MSE/ME and in 2000, began his Ph.D. program. Although
he's still a reserve officer, he only works as an instructor now.
Sherburne says he misses law enforcement's immediate gratification.
"I made a difference in somebody's life. Now, it's more
the self-satisfaction that I can push through and get an education at
a place like Berkeley. This is not an easy place to be. My first semester
was tough."
Sherburne is a diagnosed dyslexic. He was often placed in special education
classes as a child, he says, and later avoided tough courses. In his
first days on campus, he wondered, What the hell am I doing here?
Sherburne didn't have time to second-guess himself. He quickly
learned to make friends in class who would let him cross-check his notes
against theirs. "I met some great people who were more than willing
to help me," he says. "They realized I was willing to work
and wasn't just copying from them." In this way, Sherburne
says he kept up with the notorious pace of Cal engineering classes.
When he finishes, Sherburne says, he hopes to teach at American River
College. Though books and faculty retreats aren't as dramatic as
guns and drug dealer stakeouts, Sherburne gleans a different sort of
satisfaction: "I'm doing something I never thought I was good
at and enjoying it."
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