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Success Stories - Valedictorians for Commencement 2012

2012 Valedictorian with Engineering Deans
College of Engineering Valedictorian & McPhee Scholar Nathaniel Donald Summerville
with Engineering Dean Mahyar Amouzegar and Associate Dean Cordelia Ontiveros.


Overall College of Engineering: Nathaniel Donald Summerville (Summa Cum Laude)
Mr. Nathaniel Donald Summerville earned a 3.96 GPA in Civil Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona, and he is the Valedictorian for the College of Engineering. Nathaniel chose Civil Engineering because he enjoyed working in construction with his father. He was an active member of the Cal Poly Pomona Steel Bridge team and was the captain in 2011.

Nathaniel was also an undergraduate research assistant on a grant from the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation. His fondest memories of Cal Poly Pomona are his professors, the steel bridge team, and above all his wife Abigail whom he met on the first day of transfer orientation. They were married last September.

Nathaniel plans to become a licensed Civil Engineer and is currently working for CH2M Hill, an international full-service environmental design firm. Nathaniel would like to thank all his family and friends and professors, who supported him and made this achievement possible.

Aerospace Engineering: Samira Arif Motiwala (Summa Cum Laude)
Samira has been involved with zero-gravity experiments. Based on this work, she has presented at conferences and has published papers. After graduation Samira will intern with NASA over the summer and then will attend Stanford University in the fall.

Chemical Engineering: Kenneth Patrick Kelley (Summa Cum Laude)
Kenneth was the 2010-11 Vice President, and the 2011-12 President of Omega Chi Epsilon. He served as the 2011-12 Vice President of the Materials Engineering Honor Society, and was the recipient of Cal Poly Pomona's President's Council Scholarship in 2011.

Civil Engineering: Nathaniel Donald Summerville (Summa Cum Laude)
Nathaniel was the overall College of Engineering Valedictorian and recipient of the Julian A. McPhee Honor Award For Student Excellence.

Computer Engineering: Bryce Allen Feigum (Summa Cum Laude)
Bryce served as the Vice President of the Robotics Club this past year. After graduation he will be working as an Electrical Systems Engineer at MoviMED, a machine vision and medical engineering company in Irvine.

Construction Engineering Technology: Nathan John Freiberg (Magna Cum Laude)
Nathan competed with Cal Poly Pomona's Commercial Team at the Associated Schools of Construction Student Competition held in Reno, Nevada. After graduation, he plans to work full time for Walters and Wolf.

Electrical Engineering: Tyler John Thrane (Summa Cum Laude)
Tyler is currently working for Boeing as a Digital ASIC/FPGA Engineer. He plans to pursue a Master's degree in the near future.

Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology: Grigor Panosyan (Cum Laude)
After graduation, Grigor will be working for Western Digital. He is also currently working on an independent video game.

Engineering Technology: Trevor Tran
Trevor was a member of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America and worked on the club project. He is pursuing a certificate of completion in Mandarin as part of the foreign languages Chinese program in addition to his engineering degree.

Industrial Engineering: Geoffrey J. Cheung (Cum Laude)
Geoffrey was President of Alpha Pi Mu, the Industrial Engineering honor society, as well as a member of Tau Beta Pi and the Kellogg Honors College. He recently won the International IIE Process Industries paper competition and gave a presentation at the IIE annual conference in Orlando. He will be working for Coca-Cola Refreshments and plans to pursue a Master's degree in the near future.

Manufacturing Engineering: Radu Radislav Botnari
Radu recently completed a senior project where he and another student designed an alternative cutting tool storage system. After graduation, Radu will be working as a manufacturing engineer/ CNC programmer for an aerospace company and plans to pursue an MBA in the future.

Mechanical Engineering: Kevin Thomas Colangelo (Summa Cum Laude)
Kevin is a member of the Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma honor societies. He plans to "double the fun" with a master's degree in mechanical engineering and is pursuing a career in the aerospace industry.

July 2012

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