Patricia D. Brackin

[Ph.D. ME 1997]
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Terre Haute, Indiana

I decided to go to Georgia Tech because they were willing to work with me as a nontraditional student. I already had an MS and I had worked in industry. I was currently teaching at a small, undergraduate university and I wanted to go back and get a Ph.D. At the time, I was newly divorced with three small children. Most of the schools that I talked to said, "Oh, with your credentials, you will have no trouble getting into our school, and you should be able to get funding." However, the schools did nothing to help me. When I talked to Dr. Wepfer at Georgia Tech, he asked how much money I needed and then helped me secure that funding. Without his help, I would not have been able to go back and get a Ph.D.

Being at Georgia Tech was like being in a candy store where everything was free. The faculty, staff, and the infrastructure are geared to helping you succeed as a graduate student. If I needed anything for my research, my advisor made sure that I got what I needed. In addition, the school has site licenses for lots of software. I was able to get all of the software that I needed for my home and office computer for free.

The quality of the faculty, students, facilities, and programs are top notch. When I was at Tech, we moved into the new manufacturing building. I loved everything about the building - the floors, the colored pipes, and the offices. My research labs and my advisor were all in the same building which made it really nice. My fellow graduate students were wonderful. We had study groups for classes, and we had a great time talking to each other about our research. The graduate students in my lab were very interested in my research and we had lots of interesting debates about everything. My advisor had us over to his house for a cookout several times a year, so we had a nice family feel. I remember that a new Star Trek movie came out while I was in graduate school. We all got together and went to see it.

Anecdote

I started Georgia Tech during winter quarter. My first day at Tech it started snowing and all of the area schools closed. My children's school called the Woodruff School and Claudette Noel tracked me down in class and got the message to me. I was really impressed that she went to that trouble to help. I was at Tech during some momentous events in Atlanta: I started the year that Georgia Tech tied for the national football championship. I was there the year the Braves went from worst to first. And I was there for the blizzard when Atlanta got 12 inches of snow. I will always have fond memories of Atlanta.