Travis Strutzenberg

As a man that has been raised to be proactive, his personality and achievements show just that and that is why Travis Strutzenberg is this week’s campus celebrity.  In addition to his proactive mindset, his perfectionism provides for the high quality of whatever he produces.  He chooses to use the attributes of proactive and perfectionism in his interest— mechanical engineering.  He states why he acts the way he does early in his interview:
 
“I’m that guy that will stay up until 4am three nights in a row trying to get the transitions on a PowerPoint presentation to be ‘perfect’. I figure anything worth putting your name on is worth putting the time in to make it the best project it could possibly be. I don’t want my name associated with sub-par work.  This mindset is definitely going to help me advance through whatever career I choose to go into mostly because the world is filled with people just getting by on the bare minimum, and I’m set on passing them up with my work ethic and determination.”
 
Obviously, Travis did not arrive where he is today by pure luck.   He uses his work ethic to achieve what he sets out to do.  Even before college, he dived into his interests by attending Aerospace Summer Camp at University of Illinois at Chicago.  Here, he truly discovered he wanted to be an engineer as well as realizing that “it showed me that I was excelling among my peers in my personal education outside of schooling”. Furthermore, at UIC he is a member of the engineering design team.  For the first time, he was able to design robots.  In addition, he is a part of two other engineering organizations that allow him to understand the “group’s activities, budget, and planning of major events.  This has been useful to me in searching for a job after graduation in that they see my skills include strong leadership.”
 
Because Travis is a senior, he realizes that he will soon be in the working world.  However, in order to make the most of his life before he starts working full time, he wants to see the world.  He wants to have “had [his] fun and see the four corners of the earth, then working for a company that I feel good about myself while I work there and have a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day would be great”.  In addition, one of his greatest desires is to go into space.
 
Like a lot of hard workers, Travis has someone who inspires him. Specifically, his parents inspire him because they work hard, and push him to reach his goals.  They believe in no matter what he puts his mind to.  He will use this mindset for his future career!