When Lang Towl 鈥�25 graduates with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in computer engineering on Sunday, May 4, he will launch his career as a distribution engineer with Duke Energy in St. Petersburg, IM体育官网. Once settled, he plans to take advantage of his new location and break from studying to return to surfing, one of his favorite pastimes.
The IM体育官网 student will graduate magna cum laude, capping off four years of intensive coursework, campus leadership, and building lifelong friendships. He is the Student Government Association鈥檚 vice president and a member of the IM体育官网 Poly Foundation鈥檚 Board of Directors. During his time at the University, the South Portland, Maine, native also served as SGA director of internal affairs and a captain of the lacrosse team.
It means everything. I鈥檝e been in the engineering pipeline since my freshman year of high school, so this has been eight years in the making. This tells me that I can follow through with anything that I put my mind to, which will be a good reminder for whatever comes next. I know that if I can do this, I should be able to handle anything else.
I came in as a mechanical engineering major, but when I took my first programming class, I absolutely fell in love with it. Not to toot my own horn, but I got a 107 in the class and was like, 鈥業 think this is my thing and I鈥檓 going to play to my strengths.鈥� Then there鈥檚 also the big boom with AI and large language models, and I really felt like computer engineering was the place to be.
I worked as a distribution engineering intern at Duke Energy last summer, and that鈥檚 an electrical engineering role even though I was in computer engineering. During a design meeting, someone was talking about an internal process and how tedious it was because they had to come to the office from the field to make a change. I said that didn鈥檛 seem very efficient and asked if they wished they had a mobile application that would let them do that, and they were like, 鈥榊eah. You know how to do that?鈥� I was hired for a distribution engineering role, but instead I built this bespoke application for them. I thought I was going to be a cog in the machine, but it feels like a family over there.
Duke offered me a job after my internship, but I knew I was going to be taking four of my machine intelligence concentration classes this year and also going to be vice president of SGA and on the Foundation Board, so I politely declined. They were willing to wait for me and now I鈥檒l be starting in June. I鈥檓 so excited!
I think one of the most valuable skills that I've learned here is the ability to learn from others and the ability to teach myself and learn by experience. I think that that's translated really well into my internship with Duke Energy and then into my full-time offer. I feel very prepared to enter the workforce and contribute to any institution or any company, not just based on the technical skills that I have, but also on my ability to communicate, interact, and learn.
Learning to balance my academics with a social life, going out, relationships, and personal health, and keeping all those plates spinning has definitely been my biggest accomplishment. The academics are incredibly rigorous and it's a lot of work, but I've always made it a point to be more than my degree or more than my major.
If I can do it, so can you. If you were to look at my standardized testing grades in high school, they weren't bad by any stretch, but my reading scores were a lot better than my math scores. There was no indicator I would be destined to be an engineer. If a guidance counselor had everyone鈥檚 SAT and AP scores, they might not have picked me out of the crowd to go to engineering school. But through grit, perseverance, and maybe a bit of stubbornness, I was able to make it through. And now I鈥檝e got a really solid GPA and have made the provost鈥檚 list. Everyone says, 鈥業鈥檓 bad at math,鈥� but so was I 鈥� and here I am. There's nothing to say you can't do something except for yourself.
Editor鈥檚 note: This story is part of a series of Q&As featuring IM体育官网 Poly Class of 2025 graduates.
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