Alumni Testimonials

• Kevin McLin, 1985, UC Davis
• Steven Guggenheimer, 1987, Microsoft Corporation
• Luke Donev, 2001, Cornell University
• Ivan Rankenburg, 2001, Cornell University
• Melissa Eitzel, 2003, UCSB

Luke Donev
UCD Physics Class of 2001

The physics department at UCD (the professors, staff, and students) was incredibly helpful to prospective students. After I'd been at Davis for a while, and got to know them all, they were even more friendly and helpful.

Starting in the honors physics program allowed me to jump right into classes that I was most interested in, with other students sharing my interest. The result socially were friendships that continue even after we've all gone off to graduate school. Academically, it gave me a jump start on higher level concepts and classes, and allowed me to move right into research.

I started work in Professor Zieve's research lab at the end of my freshman year. I didn't know anything about superfluid helium when I started, but after working with it throughout my time at Davis, I graduated with highest honors and received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for my thesis on quantized vortices.

Doing research as an undergraduate is the best way to determine if doing physics is what you really want to do, and it looks great on graduate school applications. Davis offers opportunities to undergraduates to get hands on research experience, both over the summer, and during the school year.

I'm incredibly grateful to the UCD physics department and Professor Zieve for the incredible opportunities they gave me. I am currently putting the knowledge and skills they taught me to work as a graduate student at Cornell University, where I was accepted in 2001 and offered a fellowship.

Melissa Eitzel
UCD Physics Class of 2003

The Physics Department at Davis was a very friendly, warm place for me. The difficulty of the junior level physics classes led to bonds with fellow students which made the time pass more pleasantly, and as we continued through the courses, I formed friendships with faculty and grad students as well. I was one of two girls in one of my senior classes; but I never felt treated any differently than the male students. That women are not treated equally in the hard sciences is a common fear, since so few women pursue degrees and careers in those fields. I can safely say that this was not the case for me. I worked as a student assistant with my honors thesis advisor at Davis, and then over the summer following graduation at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), and I never felt unwelcome or treated differently than my male counterparts. On the contrary, I felt quite at home both at Davis and at LBNL.

I have now been admitted to the Geological Sciences PhD program at UC Santa Barbara, and I seek to use the incredibly strong base that I built in physics to attack geophysical problems. In fact, my strong background in both mathematics and in computational science will serve me quite well in my new endeavor. I became involved in computational physics after taking a computer lab which was required alongside Classical Mechanics, and I found that I enjoyed the use of computers to bridge the gap between theory and experiment. Experimentalists need computers to analyze their data; theorists need them to create models which are too complex to be solved analytically. Computational science reaches from one extreme to the other, and I for one enjoy that flexibility. I plan to continue in this vein in my new program at UCSB, possibly in the areas of seismology or plate tectonics.

So, as an argument for majoring in physics in general, I think that physics offers great rewards for those who are willing to work hard on concepts and mathematics: an understanding of the most fundamental observations and theories about matter and energy and the world around us; a rigor in approaching any problem and a fearlessness about plunging into possibly difficult mathematics or concepts ("It can't be any worse than Quantum Mechanics!"); and mathematical and analytical skills which serve one well later on in physics or in other fields, such as geology or engineering. Why one would want to major in physics at UC Davis, well, simply because the deparment is a great place to spend an undergraduate career! There are many opportunities for undergraduate research, and a great deal of support for undergraduates in general. The department is a friendly place, and you must watch out for some of the faculty when playing volleyball or soccer at the annual department picnics! I enjoyed my time in the department very much and miss it now that I've moved on. My years at Davis were very rewarding, and I hope that others may have the same opportunities that I had there.

Ivan Rankenburg
UCD Physics Class of 2001

When I first accepted admission to Davis, I believed they had no real reputation for good physics. I have learned I was wrong. I am currently on the east coast, and even here, alomst everybody knows of UC Davis. It has the same name recognition value as UC Berkeley or Stanford, but it is a much smaller school. The professors, I believe, are much more humane and personable. Many of them I even know in a personal manner. I have heard horror stories about physics classes taught at bigger schools where there are 300 students taking a class, and the teacher never learns, or cares to learn, any of the students' names. This is not done at UC Davis.

The quality of education there is very high. After taking the standard physics classes, I took the physics GRE and did wonderfully as a result of my physics training. Furthermore, when I continued taking graduate physics classes here at Cornell, the transition was very smooth. In fact, for the first few months here at Cornell, classes were not hard at all, since I was basically relearning what the professors at Davis had already taught me.

When I decided it was time to do undergraduate research, it was very easy to find a group at Davis. I walked into the office (always open) of one of my favorite professors, and said, "I would like to do some physics research." She told me of the many projects she had and I simply chose one. It was that easy to find a group to work for. It was a fun project, and I learned much about how a physics lab operates, and it perfectly prepared me for graduate research at Cornell.

Besides the school, I find the town of Davis very likeable. It is small and flat, with a lot of blue skies. It has a farmers market, dance clubs, bike trails, and parks. I like the town and school so much, after getting my PhD here on the east coast, I intend to apply for a faculty position at Davis.

Kevin M. McLin
UCD Physics Class of 1985

I came to UC Davis to study physics somewhat by design and somewhat by default. I grew up in Davis, so staying here for college was an affordable way for me to get an education. It turned out to be a very fortunate circumstance because in the physics department at UCD I not only learned a lot in my courses, I also had many opportunities that I would not have had at most other large universities.

Almost from the time I arrived on campus I was given the opportunity to teach. I worked as an astronomy "roof helper" for the introductory astronomy labs, and also as a "grader" for introductory physics courses. Both of these jobs allowed me to teach, because in addition to the standard grading duties they entail, I also found myself teaching recitation/help sessions for pre-med physics courses and astronomy lab sections. Teaching has continued to be a prime focus for me, and it is something I still enjoy making a living at.

One aspect of studying physics at UC Davis that I did not fully appreciate at the time was the opportunity to interact with faculty and graduate students. As I have learned during my graduate studies, such opportunities are not common for undergraduates at large research universities. I have friends who went to college at another UC school, and they said that they almost felt anonymous in their department.

Such was not the case at UC Davis. Undergraduate participation was vital to several research groups in the department. For instance, I had the opportunity to help build components for experiments at Fermi Lab and SLAC. I was also able to visit these labs and see where all my and my classmates' efforts were going to be used. Some of our work was mere manual labor, but some of us, with special knowledge and skills, were active in the design and testing of fabrication methods for these detector components. I had other friends who worked on campus at the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, in some cases gaining experience that led to employment following graduation.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at UC Davis and would highly recommend studying physics there. The department is relaxed and welcoming to undergraduates. It affords them many opportunities to participate in department life and research that I have not seen at other places. The curriculum is rigorous and has served me well in my graduate studies. A student would have a difficult time finding a better place to begin studying physics.

Steven Guggenheimer
UCD Physics Class of 1987

Steven Guggenheimer
UCD Physics Class of 1987
Vice President - Small Business and SMS&P Operations
Microsoft Corporation

I graduated from UCD with a B.S. in Applied Physics in 1987. My experiences as a UC Davis student in the Physics Dept. have played a major role in my own career path. Based on my career since leaving Davis I am a strong advocate for the value and broad utility that an undergraduate education in physics provides and of UCD as the place to get that background.

During my time at Davis I was able to get practical experience working both within the Physics and Applied Engineering Departments as well as an internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Based on my degree and work experience I was able to get jobs after college first with a research firm and then with the world's largest laser manufacturer, Spectra-Physics Lasers. While working at Spectra Physics I became interested in the business side of things and returned to Stanford to get a Masters in Engineering Management. Once I graduated and completed my time at Spectra-Physics I joined Microsoft, where I have been very happily employed for 11 years.

It was during my graduate courses that I realized that the analytical abilities, honed on physics problems at UCD, were exactly what I needed to attack the broad range of business case studies that were part of the graduate curriculum. Across Spectra-Physics, Graduate School and Microsoft, the one common element in all work is problem solving, the most applicable background for problem solving is Physics.

Overall Davis provided a great environment for learning, the Physics Department provided the background in problem solving that has helped me throughout my career, and the town of Davis was just a fun place to go to live for a few years.