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December 2, 2002 Vol.73, no. 15F
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| MSEA IN ACTION: The officers of the
Materials Science and Engineering Association say that the group
gives them a better understanding of their major. “Most students
go into engineering blindly,” says MSEA president Matt Lowry.
Photo by Angela Privin. |
MSEA says
that size does matter at Berkeley
With only 89 undergraduate MSE majors, the Materials Science and Engineering
Association (MSEA) has a small pool to recruit from. Luckily the student
society is popular among MSE double majors, who help populate their
sparse ranks.
MSEA President Matt Lowry is a ChemE and MSE double major. “MSE
is a major that is easily combined with and compliments other engineering
majors,” he says.
Because it’s so small, MSE students often feel like their major
slips under the radar of other engineers.
Conversely, members also say that the intimacy of the department and
student society is often to their benefit, preventing them from getting
lost in the crowd and making it easier to get involved.
MSE sophomore Christina Ho became an officer after attending her first
meeting.
“They were having elections and asked me if I wanted to be an EJC
rep. Then, because I had responsibility, I kept on coming,” she
says.
One of the main missions of MSEA is to recruit people into the major,
but members say they would be happy if people just knew that their major
existed and what it was about.
“Students often don’t know what MSE is until they take the
mandatory intro course in their sophomore year. By then they are already
involved in other student societies and too busy for MSEA,” says
Lowry.
To get the word out, MSEA addresses incoming freshman at the beginning
of the school year, talks to community college students, holds Tele-bears
advising for double majors, invites professors to talk at meetings,
and throws networking events like their Big Feast.
Once they coax people into joining, MSEA concentrates on building the
academic and social support networks necessary to keep people interested
and doing well in their major.
“I came into Cal as an MSE major, but I was thinking of transferring
until I got involved in the club. I decided to become a double major
instead of transferring,” says EECS/MSE senior MK Kim.
Christina Ho says that her involvement in MSEA has helped her gain a
better understanding of MSE by learning from the experiences and advice
of older students.
Other members, like senior Galen Liao, joined purely for the social
connection. “The classroom setting isn’t really conducive
to getting to know the other people in your major. Before joining MSEA,
I felt lonely and out of place. Now I am part of a tight knit group,”
he says. As the MSEA treasurer, Liao feels like he’s finally found
his niche.
Lowry says that it was the fun and informal atmosphere at the first
meeting he attended that drew him into the organization.
This fall MSEA returned to its roots by volunteering at the opening
of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, which will now house the Materials
Science department. “I think that originally MSE evolved from the
College’s mining engineering major, which doesn’t exist now,”
adds Lowry.
Find out more about MSEA at www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~msea
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