Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

G.O.A.L.S.

My G.O.A.L.S. cover how I plan to take part in Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Enrichment, Leadership Development, and Service Engagement throughout and after my college years.

  • Global Awareness: In order to increase my global awareness throughout my time at OSU, I plan to take classes that expand my global knowledge, like cultural English and literature classes. In addition, either while I’m at OSU, or after I graduate, I would like to make some kind of impact in other countries through engineering. For example, the people in many countries don’t have access to necessities like clean water, and I want to try to change that by helping to develop better systems of water purification.
  • Original Inquiry: Research is something that I have wanted to do for a couple years now, and I think that it would not only serve as an amazing experience and learning opportunity in itself, it would expand my opportunities for the future. Doing research would connect me with people who are making a difference through engineering, and teach me not only about the topic I am researching, but about how to break down the most complex problems into manageable pieces. Something I think I would be interested in researching is sustainable agriculture or water purification.
  • Academic Enrichment: Something I am doing right now in order to increase my academic enrichment is participating in a project team called Solar Table, which aims to construct a solar panel setup on a table outside that allows students to charge phones and laptops. I plan to continue being a part of this project team, and will likely join others in my future years at OSU. Being apart of the Solar Table team has shown me how valuable participating in project teams can be, so I hope to continue being a part of them.
  • Leadership Development: I hope to hone my leadership skills in multiple ways throughout my time at OSU. First, I plan to take on leadership roles in extracurricular activities, especially project teams. I plan to act as a leader while in the classroom as well, during projects, group assignments, presentations, etc. I think taking on leadership responsibilities will help my interpersonal skills as well, which are imperative when searching for a career.
  • Service Engagement: Community service is an incredibly important part of any students’ time at OSU. I plan to participate in service that can benefit the campus of OSU, as well as the students that live here. In addition to that, I hope to participate in service that can benefit people all over the world, not just in OSU.

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

My first big academic achievement since starting school at OSU is learning how to use MATLAB. I’ve been interested in coding and programming for years in high school, but never learned much about it, so I find it extremely exciting to finally learn a programming language. MATLAB is incredibly useful in engineering, so I think knowing how to use MATLAB will be very useful for me during my time at OSU and long after, as I continue on in my engineering career. So far I’ve only learned the basics of MATLAB, but I can’t wait to learn more. I will continue to learn more about MATLAB in my fundamentals of engineering class, and will make games in MATLAB as a software design project. In addition, next semester I’m going to take a class solely about using MATLAB, so I hope to learn even more of the intricacies of MATLAB in that class. Even beyond MATLAB, I hope to learn a lot more about coding and programming during my time at OSU, and learn about many different programming languages.

About Me

My name is Molly Loughridge and my major is computer engineering within the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. I began as an environmental engineering major, but grew to love programming and working with computers during my first two years at OSU, and decided I wanted to pursue that as a career. I think there are so many different problems in the world that I can help solve using computer engineering, as technology has become so prevalent in our world today. During my first year at OSU, I got involved in the Solar Bus Stop project team, which aims to implement solar panels onto an existing bus stop on campus to power charging stations and an interactive screen. We competed in the Smart Campus Challenge and presented our sustainable idea to judges, and won $20,000 in funding in order to complete our project. This is incredibly exciting to me, as I feel I have made an impact on the OSU campus. In addition to the project team, I also co-founded the Unicycle Club, which is a student organization on campus. I learned how to unicycle during my first year at OSU and helped start the club in order to teach other students as well! Another interest of mine is definitely music, as I’ve played the flute for 8 years and the piccolo for 4 years. I joined the student theater organization Off The Lake and played flute in the pit for the musical 9 To 5 during my second year at OSU, and I had a blast! We unfortunately were not able to actually preform the musical because of the covid-19 pandemic, but it was still an amazing experience to rehearse with the other members of the pit! Being at OSU has been incredibly exciting and fulfilling experience and I can’t wait for what’s to come!