Meet Joseph Reckamp ‘14
Major: Chemical Engineering with a minor in Engineering Entrepreneurship
Hometown: Betavia, Illinois
Activities:
- Research on biomass conversions for which he received the Carlos B. Rosas Chemical Engineering scholarship
- Member of the executive board of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), Student Chapter
- President of the VU Chem-E Car program
Next Steps: Joseph came to Villanova with enough AP credits to start as a sophomore and complete the program in three years. In the summer of 2013 he will intern at Proctor & Gamble with a focus on manufacturing. He sees a career on the business side of engineering and eventually plans to pursue an MBA.
Putting Engineering to the Business Test
By the time we complete the program, students pursuing the Engineering Entrepreneurship minor are challenged with developing an idea that we can bring to fruition, something we can actually market. Our group is currently working on an idea for a portable and inexpensive rice huller for the developing world. With this device, farmers would no longer have to manually shell the rice, or sell it to industrial rice hullers and then buy it back at a higher price. Another project we’re considering involves building a system in a smartphone to allow it to expand to tablet size. This integration between phone and tablet would be much like Microsoft’s integration between tablet and laptop.
By combining engineering with business, we’ve learned to consider how to deliver projects at cost and how to be most efficient. You have to ask yourself if what you’re working on is going to be feasible. It’s cool to be able to look at the big picture instead of just those research results student engineers tend to focus on.
