Stephen Wong BS '15

 

Stephen Wong first realized he wanted to be a civil engineer after his sister introduced him to the work of Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor, and painter. The structural design work of Calatrava spoke to Stephen and, with an interest in pursuing a career that incorporated math, he found his way from Aurora, Ohio to Baltimore, Maryland.

Stephen chose JHU for a variety of reasons but was especially drawn to the challenging academic environment and the diversity of students here. He wanted to work hard and still socialize with friends hailing from differing backgrounds and holding different perspectives than his own.

He soon decided to pursue a double major in Sociology and Civil Engineering and became a research assistant in the Poverty & Inequality Research Lab and the Sensor Technology and Infrastructure Risk Mitigation (STIRM) Laboratory. He balanced school and research work with activities such as Club Swimming, Club Triathlon, and Hopkins Christian Fellowship, while still managing to work with the Admissions Office as a Tour Guide and Admissions Representative.

His time at JHU fueled an interest he held from a young age in transportation, and he is currently enrolled in an M.S., Ph.D. program in Civil Engineering at UC Berkeley. His emphasis will be on Transportation Engineering, and he attributes this next step largely to the environment at Hopkins. “We don’t build things in a vacuum,” he states. “The Civil Engineering Department gave me the flexibility to explore other areas (leading to my second major) and allowed me to figure out how I could incorporate social ideas into my engineering work.” He also found the Civil Engineering advisors very helpful in his graduate school application process. “They have been through it themselves and know exactly what to do, helping me every step of the way and working hard to make UC Berkeley a reality for me.”

Before leaving Baltimore, Stephen decided to make his cross-country trek a worthwhile one, participating in the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adult’s 4K for Cancer. In his own words, this 70-day, 4,000+ mile bike ride, “was a life-changing journey for an incredible cause across a beautiful country. The ride was also the exclamation point on my time in Baltimore. I left here knowing that I was giving something back to a place I called home for four years.”