Welcome to the Hopkins Interactive forums. My name is Brian and I am an environmental engineering major here at Hopkins. I'm from Central New Jersey, close to the great Jersey Shore. I went to High Technology High School, a pre-engineering "magnet" school.

I chose Hopkins for a variety of reasons. Even though I am an engineer, I wanted to go to a school that was strong in the humanities as well. When I visited here, I found everyone to be very considerate and genuine. In short, they were the kind of people that I could see becoming my friends over the next four years. Also, the great environmental engineering department here played a major role in my decision.

During my freshman year, I lived in Wolman Hall, which is of course the best of the freshman dorm choices. As a sophomore, I now live in the Charles Commons, which is just incredible as far as dorms go. As for my involvement in other groups on campus, I am in charge of member recruitment and retention for the Hopkins Organization for Programming, am a member of the News-Letter Graphics team, and am involved with the Engineering Ambassadors admissions group as well.

Here's a list of the classes that I have taken thus far at Hopkins:
Fall 2008 - Intro to Environmental Engineering, The Environment and Your Health, Freshman Seminar on the Nobels in Medicine and Chemistry, Calculus II, Physics I and Lab

Spring 2009 - Current and Emerging Environmental Issues (Environmental Chemistry), Americans and their Environment (Environmental History), Intro to Computation and Mathematical Modeling, General Physics II and Lab, and Undergraduate Research

Fall 2009
Water Resource Development - Each week, we study a different river system of the world. We study how the rivers have influenced the land (the geomorphology) and also how the rivers have impacted culture in those areas.
Solid Waste Engineering and Management - The science, engineering, and business management principles associated with the handling of municipal solid waste (aka trash) through landfills, waste-to-energy incineration, recycling, etc.
Ecology - Study of ecosystems and the organisms within them, etc.
Statics - Essentially, the physics of things that are not moving. Harder than it sounds.
Research - I work in my advisor's lab and get 3 credits that count for my "technical electives" requirement for my major.

I am really enjoying getting into the more advanced classes in my major. I started working in my advisor's research lab during my Freshman year. I love the work that I do there, and I am continuing in his lab this year. Our research is on the issue of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in wastewater. We are particularly concerned about what happens when this water is "recycled" as drinking water, as is becoming more common in the Southwest. You can read more about our work here.

If you have any questions about environmental engineering (or engineering in general), life at Hopkins, etc. feel free to post them below! Also, follow me on twitter (@JHU_Brian) for the life of a Hopkins student in 140 characters or less.

This post has been edited by JHU_Brian on Nov 11 2009, 04:07 PM