Ms. Anna Clifton

BS in Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2019

‘I am actually a third-generation Lamar student. My grandmother went and then my mother graduated from there. My Mom always talked to me about Campus Corner. It is right across the street from the College of Engineering. And, so, it was a second home to me.

 Growing up in China, I was in a very small community. I was really surprised at the diversity at Lamar. I felt like I had travelled the world, and it was just 20 minutes away. I worked with all the international students, that I had the opportunity to meet. Also, in the Engineering Department we had professors from such diverse backgrounds.

‘Majority of my memories are from my senior year. You bond so deeply because of the course load that you are given. We went through something intense with one another. I am still best friends with a couple of people that I met not just in engineering but also in Campus Corner. Although we were all from different cultures and different age groups, we were going through something together. This resulted in a friendship that can’t be replicated. I made friends from Pakistan and Africa, and some friends who have gone to Canada, France, and China.

 
‘One of my projects was creating a battery that had less harmful material than the traditional lithium-ion battery that we use. Another was developing a coding that would go on the bottom of marine vessels that would be non-toxic to the environment and not something that would impact people negatively on the global scale because you have these large maritime vessels. These projects were a continuation. I would pick it up from a master’s student and take it as far as I could. Then it would be adopted by another master’s student.’