Alisha Goad - University of Alabama

I am an Electrical Engineering and Mathematics double major at the University of Alabama planning to graduate in May 2018. I am focusing on power and energy systems, as well as mathematical statistics.

I chose to study engineering after participating in a sequence of pre-engineering courses offered by Project Lead the Way in high school. One of the courses in the sequence was Digital Electronics and covered material on the topics of logic gates, integrated circuits, and much more. This course made me excited about learning about how electronics worked in the most basic ways and I knew that there would be so much more to learn. Thus, I decided to pursue an electrical engineering degree. But, electrical engineering is such a wide-ranging field employed in many different disciplines that I became overwhelmed by the options. However, a lecture on power engineering opened my eyes to the impact of the field.

The thing that I love the most about power engineering is the impact that it has on people. We all depend on power in our daily lives. There is a storied history within the power engineering field, but the industry is changing, which makes it an extremely exciting time to be entering the field. My enthusiasm for power engineering comes from the tremendous room for growth and improvement in how we generate, transmit, and distribute power.

How has been selected as a PES Scholar impacted you?

Being selected as an IEEE PES Scholar has impacted me positively. The opportunities that this recognition has provided me have been boundless from connecting with professors performing research in the field to networking with peers and industrial professionals. The scholarship has been helpful in allowing me to further pursue a degree in electrical engineering.

January 2017