Craig Brecheisen knew most of his life that he wanted to become a mechanical engineering because of his love of race cars and always trying to figure out how things work. If you love to design or dig into machinery—take things apart, put things back together, and figure out how and why they work—you have it in you to become a mechanical engineer. UW-Green Bay’s Mechanical Engineering Program is the only one of its kind in Northeast Wisconsin and provides you with state-of-the-art technology and hands-on experiences in the brand-new Brown County STEM Innovation Center’s engineering labs on the Green Bay Campus. See the website for more.
Video Transcript: When you realize that you are smart enough and the whole time you were smart enough and you just needed to learn how to work. That’s where the benefit came from. I remember that aha moment that I had when I was at the tech school. Realizing that you had it in you the whole time, you just needed to do the work.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, gave me a chance to earn my Mechanical Engineering degree without having to leave Green Bay. Wow, moment I had, it’s the first time that I ever stepped foot into the new STEM building. Technology is state-of-the-art, top-notch, and brand new. Thermodynamics would be one of my favorite classes. The other class that I really enjoyed was Finite Element Analysis. In this class, you get to create different projects i.e., front-end geometry for race cars. And then put different forces on it to see how it acts. To see if it will hold up, what your design in your head, put in a computer with real-life forces on it, will it last. You actually get something physical to see.
I feel like my instructors are more of mentors than they are the traditional professor to students. The ratio of a student to professor is really low, which allows you to build a rapport with them. They’re always willing to help you and if you’re willing to put in your time, they will help you achieve what you’re looking to achieve.
This campus will always be a huge part of me because this is the beginning of the second half of my life. Like another chapter, where I started from scratch, grew up, learned things, and then went out into the world to apply them. This university gave me a chance to achieve one of my greatest lifetime goals and that’s being a Mechanical Engineer.
