Graduating senior wins top honors in CECS and university
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Shelley Thurk (’13) was working as an assistant service manager at a car dealership in Encino, but she was bored. Although she had always been drawn to cars and had earned an A.A. degree specifically because she wanted to work in the automotive industry, she realized after a year that she was more interested in design and building. Vacillating between architecture and engineering, she was looking into schools when she saw CSUN’s Formula SAE car and discovered her future.
“I wanted to be part of that,” she says.
In 2009, she enrolled in the College of Engineering and Computer Science as a mechanical engineering major and quickly plunged into her studies. She particularly appreciated how accessible the faculty was and the applied nature of the curriculum, which stressed hands-on experiences rather than concentrating exclusively on theory.
“A lot of what we learned applied to actual industry rather than straight textbook problems,” she says.
She went on to gain industry experience herself through two internships. And, of course, she joined the Formula SAE team.
But college had a surprise in store for her. At Tech Fest one year, she encountered the Boston Scientific Neuromodulation booth, and it changed her life. She was so intrigued by what she learned there that she decided to redirect her career goals to the medical device industry. When she was accepted into the college’s Honors Co-Op program, she landed a position at Medtronic MiniMed, an experience she describes as “by far the best thing that has happened to me during my time at CSUN.”
Thurk participated in faculty research and tutored other students in multiple subjects. She made the dean’s list every semester and was recognized with numerous scholarships and awards, including the Presidential Scholarship and University Scholars Scholarship. Her academic accomplishments were so impressive that she was named the 2012-13 Distinguished College of Engineering and Computer Science Graduating Scholar—a significant honor all on its own.
But the recognition didn’t end there. At the Honors Convocation last May, Thurk learned that she was receiving the 2013 Wolfson Scholar Award—the highest honor awarded to a CSUN graduating senior.
Today Thurk is working for Boston Scientific in her native Minnesota, in the company’s interventional cardiology division. She is also attending graduate school in mechanical engineering part time at the University of Minnesota, which has a strong focus on medical devices for research—an emphasis that dovetails perfectly with her own interests. In all likelihood, however, she would not have found herself where she is without her four, very fulfilling years at CSUN.