Women Engineers: Many Paths to a Rewarding Life

Cassie Browning '07
New directions

“I grew up in Kentucky in a very small town and hadn’t been exposed to engineering -- not really other than what I had seen on television.”

M.S. in Computer Systems Engineering '07.

Currently a doctoral candidate in Computer System Engineering.

I grew up in Kentucky in a very small town and hadn’t been exposed to engineering -- not really other than what I had seen on television  -- it wasn’t something I’d been exposed to enough to think about until I was working alongside electrical engineers in the Army.

Most of my peers were electrical engineers, so they were working with the technical aspects of the equipment. That’s what I found so fascinating and I thought, “I wish I had gone down that path.”

LEAP [Late-entry accelerated program] is such a great program. It provides students that didn’t receive an undergrad in engineering the opportunity to come back and obtain a master’s degree in engineering.

Phase one is the catch-up – taking all the hard-core stuff, math and physics, that you’d take as an undergrad. Then, maintain a certain GPA and you’re admitted into the master’s program. I was really impressed with the quality of instruction and the organization of classes. They put a lot of emphasis on real world application of problems.

I’m a little unusual because I have two kids, so it took me much longer than most. I went down to one class a semester during my child’s first year, and I was back full time and finishing my master’s portion in a year and a half. ”

My younger son was three months old when he was diagnosed with cancer and had to have immediate surgery. His surgery was scheduled for the week of finals. This was my first semester in the graduate program. I told my professors what was going on because I felt I couldn’t sit in class or concentrate very well. They were so accommodating and understanding. I can’t imagine a better way they could have been; they made me feel really comfortable. He’s doing well now, and they still to this day ask about him.

The research I’m doing now -- Professor Allyn Hubbard’s lab before I arrived had developed something called an acoustic direction finder, and the application they’ve been working on is for a soldier in the field to be able to locate sniper fire. The device can determine direction and elevation. They’ve had this set on robots, but now the question is can we put this on a soldier? If so, how would the information be relayed to the soldier? So I developed, for my master’s degree project, a user interface -- a graphical display that looks somewhat like a RADAR screen and can show soldiers where fire is coming from.”

I’ve really been enjoying myself so decided to stay for a Ph.D.