Making her mark: Gwynne Briggs

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Gwynne Briggs
More than 100 electrical and computer engineering undergraduate students will be among the 10,400 who will earn degrees – the largest spring quarter graduating class ever – during the final quarter commencement exercises at Ohio State on Sunday, June 10, 2012. Some ECE graduates will continue their education, while others will enter the workforce. Each of these students has a unique story; join us as we highlight a few of them over the next week.
 
Gwynne Briggs may have been following in her parents’ footsteps when she chose to study electrical and computer engineering at Ohio State — both are Ohio State alumni and electrical engineers — but she stayed because she found the classes interesting and challenging.

“I came into ECE at Ohio State following one older sister, Elyse Briggs Benner (’10, BSECE), and two parents, Joe Briggs (’81 BSEE) and Shirley Belknap Briggs (’81 BSEE). They each had their own impacts on the program and the university, but so did I,” says Briggs. “I am happy that people still know me for me, rather than their daughter or younger sister.”

Briggs definitely made her own impact, both inside and outside the classroom. She has been an undergraduate teaching assistant with the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors program for three years. As a teaching assistant, Briggs assisted freshmen honors engineering students with C/C++, MATLAB, Autodesk Inventor, engineering drawings, technical writing, and hands-on labs. She also worked on designing and building the course for the FEH Robot Design Project and mentored students taking part in the project.

During the past year, Briggs has also been an active member of Eta Kappa Nu, the honorary for electrical engineering, and the IEEE @ OSU Student Chapter.

Outside of the university, Briggs completed two internships with 3dB Labs, Inc. and John Deere. In fact, it was her first internship following her sophomore year that confirmed engineering was the right career choice for her.

“I hadn't had much of an opportunity before that point to try actual engineering work, instead of just the theoretical work completed in the introductory ECE classes,” she says. “However, once I had that opportunity, I was pretty sure this was the right path for me.”

Following graduation on June 10, Briggs’ next adventure will be to move to Stuttgart, Germany and work for M.C. Dean, Inc. There she will be working on control systems for Department of Defense facilities around Germany. Briggs will also be able to indulge her love of traveling, which began when she was nine years old and her family moved to North Yorkshire, England.
 

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