"I really enjoyed the fact that I got to meet a lot of international students. I thought that was something I really wanted to pursue during my undergraduate career." –Henry Pan, MSU senior
Henry Pan is a graduating senior at MSU's College of Engineering, class of 2016. Pan will be delivering the College of Engineering commencement speech as the student body representative on Sunday, May 8, 2016 at the Breslin Center.
Pan attended Troy High School in Troy, MI. Upon attending MSU, he chose to study chemical engineering because of its wide range of career opportunities.
"I was really interested in being able to work with a field that could go into different applications, whether it be food, biology, also process engineering," he said.
As a high school senior, Pan applied to MSU because of its cultural diversity. "The diverse student body really helps in terms of broadening the student perspective and being able to see the world in different viewpoints," he said.
Pan made it a priority to meet students with various backgrounds and cultures. He chose to work as an intercultural aid, a student staff member in a residence hall, and to help international students overcome any hardships that would interfere with their academic performance.
"I noticed how a lot of students who, even though they were doing well in terms of academic performance, things in life got in the way," Pan said, "I felt like I wanted to bring up things we learned in school and look as to how they can be applied to solving some of these life obstacles."
This experience as an intercultural aide acts as the foundation for his commencement speech.
"I open the speech kind of joking around typical engineering things that we can all relate to, such as long nights in the engineering building," Pan said.
"I do then seep into a more sentimental portion of the speech where I really talk about how engineering can be a tool that can be used outside of science as well and a lot of the principles can be used while even approaching some of life's toughest obstacles," he said.
After graduation, Pan will begin working towards a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and has hopes of attending the University of Texas at Austin.
