Since graduating and beginning my career as an engineer, Dr. Branson’s classes and their accompanying lessons have proved to be the single most valuable classes I took during my 4-year stay at the University of Louisville. The benefits range from improving on hard skills like soldering, PCB layout, and use of motion control software to more fundamental and conceptual items like developing my engineering mindset and understanding the prototyping/product development process.

One of the most significant benefits that Dr. Branson’s BUILD class had was providing a safe environment for students to fail. Traditional class formats in which a student’s grade is primarily decided by exams and homework assignments enforce a notion that failure is objectively bad. In my current role as a hardware development engineer, my days are filled with prototyping and experimentation, which in turn means that they are filled with failure. Failure is simply a part of developing anything, whether that be a new skill, a new product, a new process, etc. Within every failure is a lesson to be learned and valuable data to be extracted. This concept is something I was naive to before I went through Dr. Branson’s classes. The experience of sitting with my classmates and brainstorming possible solutions and design approaches to the various challenges presented in the class was extremely valuable. Being able to physically work with so many electrical engineering concepts that I had been taught in previous classes helped to put those concepts in context. Many things that we theorized or tried did not work, but through these classes I learned that this is not something to be afraid of. Having somebody with as much expertise as Dr. Branson to answer questions and guide us along the way was also invaluable.

Dr. Branson’s classes not only provided me with the skills to be able to do my job, but also the mindset to be able to do my job well.

Khalid