Depth of Fields
Today's science grads find vast opportunities.
Internships with Motorola and Microsoft put Michael Armbrust in high demand when he graduated this spring. After fielding offers from many industry and graduate programs, he chose University of California-Berkeley's PhD program in computer science.
At the ripe young age of five, Michael Armbrust (BS '06, Computer Science and Mathematics) was initiated into the field of computer programming. Accompanying his dad to the office on occasional weekends, Armbrust would sit in front of a green screen for hours, typing endless rows of letters and words with the keyboard. Just two years later, when his family obtained its first personal computer - a Commodore 64 - Armbrust learned to program loops that would automatically type his name again and again.
Not surprisingly, Armbrust enrolled in the College of Science's computer science major, fully intending to spend his career in industry. "I thought I was going to be a coder just like my dad," explains Armbrust, speaking from his office at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, where he was interning in June.
But while he has thoroughly enjoyed working on the SQL server the last two summers, it's Berkeley, not Microsoft, that's calling his name for the next few years. Last April, after fielding offers from other top computer science programs at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Michigan, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Armbrust committed to the University of California's PhD program.
"I was thrilled with the way it turned out, and I really credit Purdue's reputation and my professors writing letters of recommendation," says Armbrust, who waited until the last possible day to make his graduate school decision. While science is by nature an expansive field, Armbrust - like many of his fellow alumni - believes that a degree from the Purdue College of Science opened up an even wider world of opportunities than he might have had otherwise.
Anna Treaster (BS '06, Physics), one of the college's Outstanding Seniors, began the PhD program in astrophysics at University of California-Berkeley this fall.
"Science is so diverse," says Cher Yazvac, career consultant in the Center for Career Opportunities. Consider the various fields where science grads are employed: biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, geology, law, medicine, jounalism, public policy - the list goes on and on. Each year, the college collects sample job titles for each of its departments; for May 2005 graduates, those titles include (among many others) pharmaceutical chemist, second lieutenant, product development engineer, computer architect, earth science teacher, actuarial analyst, radar systems analyst, physics teacher, apprentice zookeeper, immunoassay technician, environmental consultant, and software engineer.
That last job title belongs to Greg Ose (BS '06, Computer Science), who started work in June at Motorola's Champaign-Urbana division. Although some of his CS classmates are now furthering their educations, Ose says that industry was the right pursuit for him - right now.
Much of his decision had to do with the current high-tech job outlook, he says. "In previous years technology opportunities were down, and people had more incentives to keep going to school for awhile. Today, there are a lot of opportunities out there with companies," he says. "And companies offer assistance for continuing education, so that's an incentive to start off in the workforce."