Forrest Bratton: Guided by a Sense of Wonder
As an undergraduate, Forrest was part of the Engineering Honors/Plan II Honors Dual Degree Program, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts.
Recent graduate Forrest Bratton isn’t worried about what the future will bring. He is confident that his sense of wonder will continue to guide him in the right direction. As a dual Plan II Honors and Architectural Engineering student, he enjoyed a course schedule that encouraged intellectual exploration and also met all of the requirements of our Architectural Engineering program. He hopes that this interdisciplinary approach will carry over into his career.
Since middle school, he has been interested in architecture and the construction of buildings. Also drawn to mathematics, Architectural Engineering seemed like a sensible fit – he could be involved in design while also using his natural analytical strengths. The department’s top national ranking and the fact that he’s been a Longhorn at heart for as long as he can remember brought him to UT CAEE from Texarkana, Texas.
During his first year of college life, Forrest was in the Longhorn Band, continuing to play the alto saxophone as he did in high school. He was also active in his church, traveling to Mexico and Mozambique for various volunteer work. The trip to Mozambique, where he worked with infants and at a boy’s home, left an indelible mark and the desire to return.
Forrest was also admitted to the Plan II Honors program during his freshman year. Through this program, academically advanced students complete a core curriculum emphasizing the liberal arts, and the remaining classes are chosen from the extensive list of the University's departmental offerings. Plan II students also have access to all honors-level courses at the University.
Forrest and his wife, Katy, enjoy a Longhorn football game together.
“As for being a dual major, well, I’ve loved it”, he says. “Being able to intersperse classes like Engineering Statistics and Structural Analysis with classes like Contemporary African History has been wonderful. I have learned to be a more creative problem solver, which has everyday applications and influences how I set goals. And sometimes I recognize parallels and make connections that help me arrive at a new understanding of something.”
Forrest appreciates that his CAEE professors strive to make the material they are teaching as relevant as possible and show glimpses of more advanced concepts (calculations, designs, theories, etc.) that he will be able to work with one day in practice. Throughout his undergraduate experience, several of his professors offered constructive advice and helped him and other students find internships and apply for scholarships. “Overall,” he says, “I get the feeling that my professors are excited about their work and want to get us students excited about it as well.”
CAEE staff members have also been supportive when he has needed it. Joanne Belsley, the Senior Program Coordinator from the department’s Advising Office helped him figure out his course schedule when it did not line up well and showed him how to navigate the scholarship application process. “Besides that”, he says, “she always seems to be in a good mood, and that quickly sets me at ease when I’m anxious about something.”
Studying abroad had a profound effect on Forrest's undergraduate experience and he encourages other students to try living outside of the U.S.
He advises incoming students to seize any opportunity to study abroad, which is just what he did. He spent the Fall 2008 semester studying in Denmark. While he did not take any engineering classes, he got to know his relatives and worked hard to pick up the language. He considers his experiences an important part of his education. Being able to explore another country and see how the U.S. is viewed from a different perspective helped him to understand more about how he would like to live his life.
“Living on my own in Denmark was both challenging and exhilarating”, says Forrest. “I experienced the difficulty of making new friends and dealing with loneliness just as I had when I first came to UT. But I also had an epiphany when I realized that I was free: free to take risks, free to make mistakes, free to be different. So I bought a plane ticket to fly from Copenhagen to Oslo, which was the beginning of a nine-day unplanned trip through Scandinavia, during which I lived mostly on peanut butter and bread, traveled on trains, and spent a couple of nights in a town two hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. I even slept under a bridge one night and hitchhiked 800 kilometers from Trondheim, Norway to Stockholm, Sweden.”
Forrest is interested in many aspects of sustainable design and would like to work for a structural or construction engineering firm. He is also interested in working as a consultant so that he can help design buildings that produce more energy than they use and actually contribute to the natural environment via water, soil, or air purification. He would like to see more structures become pleasant, inspiring places to live and work. While he knows these goals are lofty, he has faith that they can be accomplished.
Forrest graduated this May (2010) and is currently helping his father-in-law build a house while looking for full-time work. Unlike many of his classmates who opted to head straight for graduate school, Forrest has decided to wait. “Grad school lies ahead somewhere for me in the future, he says, “but first I want to work for a while to find out what else I really need to learn.”