Kevin Chiang '18 works as a junior engineer at a specialty engineering firm, aDB Engineering in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver is a popular filming location as it is home to an active west coast seaport that is surrounded by mountains.
“The city has a thriving art, film and theater district that often needs engineering support for set designs,” said Chiang. “For example, one film requested a windmill design and our job was to specify the foundation and make it a safe, functional structure.”
Chiang enjoys that his job allows him to interface with clients on projects and work with a team at the business. As it’s a smaller firm, everyone at the company has the opportunity to serve in a variety of roles to work through engineering challenges to successfully complete a project.
Chiang received his undergraduate degree in architectural engineering, specializing in structural engineering from California Polytechnic State University. He enjoyed his time in school and his major and wanted to build on his education as a structural engineer.
“Upon college graduation, I was interested in immediately pursuing my master’s degree,” said Chiang. “The Professional Master’s Program at Rice seemed like the best fit because I could complete the program in a year as a full-time student from a university with a prestigious reputation.”
Chiang enrolled in the Professional Master’s Program in 2017 and graduated in 2018. He was also drawn to Rice because of its small class size and accessibility to the professors, many of whom had an abundance of industry experience that made their expertise a valuable learning tool.
“The professors were able to discuss, in depth, some of the challenges and difficulties that they had faced in their professional careers with industry clients. This gave me so much more insight than professors who solely have academic experience can provide,” said Chiang.
Chiang also enjoyed meeting and working with other Rice students, who were from around the world. He appreciated the diversity of the student population and still keeps up with some of the students he met at during his time at Rice.
“Overall, I think that completing my professional master’s program at Rice gave me an edge over the competition as I entered the workforce,” said Chiang. “I was able to move to a city of my choosing and find a good job with the experience that my education provided for me.”
Chiang is currently working toward his professional licensure as an engineer in Canada and the United States.