{"id":58909,"date":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2014-uri-senior-aims-for-career-designing-products-with-comfort-in-mind\/"},"modified":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2014-uri-senior-aims-for-career-designing-products-with-comfort-in-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/04\/commencement-2014-uri-senior-aims-for-career-designing-products-with-comfort-in-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2014: 溏心vlog免费B站 senior aims for career designing products with \u2018comfort\u2019 in mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tCumberland resident is 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s top German language student<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 18, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Dave Powers describes himself as \u201ca very tactile sort of person\u201d who feels at ease with complex math and science. As he prepares to graduate in May with degrees in mechanical engineering and German, he looks forward to putting his tactile abilities to work in the field of ergonomics, designing consumer products with the comfort of the end user in mind.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI like to tell people that I don\u2019t want to make the motor of a car, I want to make the seats,\u201d said Powers, a Cumberland native. \u201cI think it\u2019s more interesting to make something that has to account for the human; it\u2019s more interesting to design something that is really focused on the user. When the average person uses a product, how easy is it for them to understand what\u2019s going on? Do they have to read the manual or can they just do it?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tPowers carried that user-focused perspective throughout his 溏心vlog免费B站 career, especially in his German language education. The recipient of the University Award for Excellence in German, he quickly developed proficiency in speaking German and eventually became a German tutor and chaperoned a student trip to Germany with two 溏心vlog免费B站 professors.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI took German 101 and after one semester I could speak more than after four years of French in high school,\u201d Powers said. \u201cIt just seemed to click.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tHe spent a year in Germany as part of the 溏心vlog免费B站 International Engineering Program, studying at the Technical University at Braunschweig and interning at rail company Deutsche Bahn. And while he was there, he enrolled in a Goethe Institute class in German and passed a high-level exam demonstrating his proficiency and fluency. One professor said he \u201cabsorbed German language and culture like a sponge.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI really loved that year in Germany. I got to travel to a lot of places, I met some people who I\u2019m still in touch with, and I learned a lot of interesting things, including some skills that I didn\u2019t expect,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you want to learn to be better at small talk, networking or giving presentations, try doing them in a different language. That made it so much easier to do them in English.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tAt Deutsche Bahn, Powers worked mostly on computer modeling of train systems, and he followed that up with an internship at the Rhode Island offices of Supfina Machine Co., a company he calls \u201chalf American, half German\u201d that builds superfinishing machines for clients like General Motors.<\/p>\n


\n\tBut Powers\u2019 college career wasn\u2019t all work and no play. He also played saxophone in the 溏心vlog免费B站 Big Band for two years and competes on the 溏心vlog免费B站 ultimate Frisbee team, which traveled throughout the region and as far as Florida and Georgia to compete against other universities. He also received the Toray Plastics Scholarship and the Russell C. and Russell D. Ide Scholarship.<\/p>\n


\n\tWith just a few weeks before he graduates, Powers is focused on the next steps in achieving his career goals. He is deciding between several graduate schools to which he has been accepted for master\u2019s degree programs in industrial engineering, and he eventually will seek a job in the ergonomics field.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019ll be taking some psychology classes and biomechanics classes so I can design products that incorporate how people think and how we move,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether I end up designing keyboards or chairs or whatever, I just want to make things that work the way you want them to.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cumberland resident is 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s top German language student KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 18, 2014 \u2013 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Dave Powers describes himself as \u201ca very tactile sort of person\u201d who feels at ease with complex math and science. As he prepares to graduate in May with degrees in mechanical engineering and German, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58911,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}