SEAS alumnus: Eric Prokop

Eric Prokop took an indirect route to graduating with an engineering degree. After beginning college as an undeclared major, he selected geography as his major and enjoyed it greatly. But as he began thinking about his career prospects, he considered engineering and decided that civil engineering would be a good fit for him.

“I thought it would be cool to be a part of the team that designs the built environments that we live in,” he said.

Switching into engineering at the end of his sophomore year meant that Eric had a number of requirements to make up, and it meant delaying graduation by a year. But that didn’t dissuade him.

“I feel great about my decision,” Eric announced. “If I could do it all over again, I might even do it the same way, because I got more of a diverse education, with two years of liberal arts, than the typical engineering student.”

And the extra work didn’t prove too much for him either. In fact, Eric did so well academically and integrated so well into the SEAS community that he was selected at the end of his senior year as the SEAS Distinguished Scholar.

At SEAS, Eric was able to explore many of the same interests he previously wanted to explore, such as travel and Spanish. One of the highlights for him was being able to participate in an Engineers Without Borders service trip to El Salvador his junior year and to lead the trip his senior year. “It was the perfect mix of the opportunity to travel, work on engineering, and improve my Spanish,” he claims.

After Eric earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from SEAS, he was admitted to Stanford University’s master’s program in structural engineering.