Over the course of the past 5 years, the Architectural Engineering program has provided me with a priceless education, and I have accumulated a large amount of knowledge and experience through my time here. The Senior Thesis project has been an excellent way to utilize what skills I have acquired from the program in a real world situation. This thesis has been the culmination of everything I've worked on and have been taught during my time at Penn State.

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In the Fall semester, the project gave me the unique opportunity of analyzing the full structural system of an already existing building. Through this process I learned a lot about myself and what areas I could improve on my skills of analysis, such as understanding post-tensioned concrete.  It also allowed me to look beyond the engineering aspect of building design, and analyze other reasons for the decisions made in the structural system as well as the architecture. Spring semester was an excellent opportunity to put my design skills to the test, as I was tasked with producing an entirely new structural system that I thought would be an acceptable alternative. Throughout the process, I was able to put what I had learned about composite steel systems to use and learn more about what designing really took. 

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The AE senior thesis was made to be a very positive experience by the excellent professors and classes offered here at The Pennsylvania State Univerity.