​Kristen Heaton
To see my full CV, click here.
Service
Throughout my first, sophomore, and seniors years at James Madison, I have assisted the engineering department by representing at open house and admitted student day events. From Spring 2016 until May 2017, and then returning in the fall of 2018, I served as a member of the Engineering Ambassadors chapter of James Madison University. In this organization, I continued to help with open house events like those I helped with as a first year. Furthermore, I gave tours of my engineering department facilities to prospective students and helped with community outreach events such as Expanding your Horizons and Valley Scholars. The former is a conference for young girls to learn about opportunities in STEM fields and the latter is a JMU program that helps local Shenandoah Valley students become first-generation college students.
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As a junior, I participated in the Madison Engineering Leadership program, where I along with a co-leader learned about different styles of leadership as well as having the opportunity to apply our experience assisting a group of nine first-year students in their projects as part of the Engineering 101 curriculum.
Work
In the summer of 2015 I began working at my local Mercedes-Benz in Arlington, Virginia. After taking classes at my high school, I became ASE Student Certified to work on automotive vehicles. This class allowed me to work underneath a technician team leader to service customer vehicles. After gaining some experience in the shop, my mentor allowed me to preform maintenance services on my own. This job gave me the opportunity to further my technical skills while working efficiently to get vehicles safely in and out of the workshop.
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As a student at James Madison University, I have served as a tutor at the Science Math Learning Center, a service where students can receive aid in their math and science classes, since January of 2017. As a tutor, I have helped students with their questions in math, spanning levels from college algebra to upper level calculus.
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Over the summer of 2017, I had the opportunity to design and build the final human powered vehicle that is part of each sophomore engineering year curriculum. Through this, I worked independently to design a bicycle frame to best fit my end user. With the help of my department lab space manager and a local bike expert I was able to build the final vehicle that will allow my end user to live more independently.
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In the summer of 2018, I interned with GHT Limited, a M.E.P design consulting firm. As an intern in the base building studio, I assisted the plumbing group by creating a master resource sheet for future projects. This sheet included the template for a project cover sheet as well AutoCAD representations of details. Furthermore, I was introduced to the software programs of AutoCAD MEP 2016 and Bluebeam Revu in the fulfillment of assisting designers in project changes. You can read more about my experience by clicking on the button below or in the page titled 'GHT Limited Internship'.
Projects
Engineering 280- Board Game Development
Throughout the 2015 and 2016 school year I was part of a residence learning community that had its own separate class. In the fall term I worked with a team of four others to develop a board game for children in the third grade. This project had multiple phases from interviewing students in the college of education to the final phase of building our own game. If you would like to read more about this project, you can review the poster below.
Independent Wayfinding Research
In November of 2016, I did research for a faculty member on methods of Wayfinding in cities. Wayfinding is "defined as spatial problem solving. It is knowing where you are in a building or an environment, knowing where your desired location is, and knowing how to get there from your present location" (University of Michigan). This research had me looking at costs of signage, paths, and road-markings from the Department of Transportation.
To see the rest of my projects, feel free to click through the collection located at the top bar of this page.