One of Ben Prunuske’s biggest tips for future UW-Madison students is to get involved! At a university with roughly 50,000 students, there are lots of opportunities to find social and academic experiences to grow both professionally and personally. A junior in the Mechanical Engineering B.S. program, Ben is living proof that getting involved will lead to success! A Faustin Prinz research fellow, secretary of ME’s honor society, and a member of the Club Basketball team, Ben is taking advantage of all that UW-Madison has to offer.
What has your engineering journey been like? Did you ‘always’ want to be an engineer?
I have always loved math and science. I find it extremely cool to see how we apply numbers and formulas to describe the world around us. During high school, I knew I wanted to continue my education at a university, but I was not exactly sure what that would look like. Engineering seemed like a good option to apply the math and science I was interested in. I also had some upper-classmen friends tell me it was easier to transfer out of the engineering program than to transfer into it, so I decided to apply for direct admission to the engineering program. Once I was at UW taking engineering courses, I really enjoyed it, so I stuck with it!
How did you decide to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering? Is there a specific area of ME you are interested in?
When it came time to declare a major and progress, I was still unsure of what I wanted to study. I liked my engineering course work and knew that I wanted to continue with engineering, but I hadn’t nailed down a specific major. I originally picked mechanical engineering because it had the most variety in what you could do with the degree. I figured the broadness of the program would allow me to decide what I wanted to do later.
This ended up working in my favor because it led me to take dynamics and dynamic systems classes, which I loved. This pushed me to take a technical elective class with Professor Mike Zinn. This class got me interested in robotics, and I have found it very interesting to learn about different techniques engineers use to allow systems to interact with environments and ways to do it autonomously.
Can you tell us about your experience as a Faustin Prinz fellow? What is your research topic? What future plans do you have for your research?
The Faustin Prinz Undergraduate Research Fellowship has been a great learning opportunity for me. I have been able to apply what I have spent the last three years of my undergraduate career learning to a project I am interested in. It is giving me an opportunity to see if research is something that I want to do more in my life.
For my project, I have been working with Professor Mike Zinn to develop a planar robot arm. It has been a great learning experience of applied robotics. It is one thing to learn about a subject in a classroom and another to try to apply it. Through this opportunity, I have learned about mechanical design, part selection, electronics, organization, and what to do when something does not work or you do not know what to do. I want to continue to build my understanding of robotic manipulators through this fellowship. I am interested in developing manipulators which mirror the limbs of animals such as bird wings, bug legs, fish fins, etc.
Are you involved in any student organizations? If so, which ones and what is your involvement?
I am a member of Pi Tau Sigma, which is a coed honor society for mechanical engineering students. I am the secretary, which means I help with organization and communication. Pi Tau has been a great opportunity to get insight into what practicing engineers do in their daily lives. It has also been a great way to make connections with other engineers.
I also am a facilitator for Dynamics (EMA 202) at the Undergraduate Learning Center. My role is comparable to being an undergraduate teaching assistant and I help re-enforce the ideas taught in lecture to help students get a better understanding of the content. It is an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. Helping others learn is a great way to learn the content yourself and it feels good to help other people.
I am also a player on the Club Basketball team. We practice together and travel to participate in tournaments. Basketball is a fun way for me to stay physically fit and practice my teamwork skills. It is also a ton of fun!
What is a favorite memory or accomplishment you have from your time in ME or at UW?
My favorite memory from my time in ME is the first time the trolley car in my Introduction to Mechanical Engineering (ME 201) class worked. In this course, we were tasked with designing, building, and testing an autonomous trolley to follow a ‘school bus’ around a track. We had spent so much time designing and building our trolley and had ran into many issues along the way that we were getting frustrated. When the gears finally spun without slipping and the trolley started moving around the track it was almost a cathartic moment. The joy we felt seeing something that we had worked on for a long time function and do what it was supposed to do was incredible.
My favorite memory as a student at UW is when the Club Basketball team was playing at a tournament in UC Boulder, and we went hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was incredibly fun to hike as a team and the views were incredible. It was a great day made better by being with good friends.
Why did you choose to attend UW-Madison? What might you share with perspective students who are considering attending UW-Madison for their undergrad degree?
UW-Madison was always on my radar, because I had lived in Madison when I was younger. I had applied to a few other schools but wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to go. When it came time to decide, I knew that Madison would be a safe bet. I have been around the campus, it has a strong academic history, the campus itself is beautiful, I like the lake, and the student life is good. I have never regretted my choice.
The best part about Madison is that there are lots of diverse opportunities. You can do all different types of things and there are lots of doors you can open if you go looking. College is different than high school in the way that no one is going to tell you what to do, but this means you have to take the initiative to find opportunities. You have to find what you are passionate about and find opportunities around it. UW-Madison has more cool events, clubs, ideas, people, and organizations than you can list but no one is going to make you get involved. That is up to you, and I cannot encourage you to get involved enough.