MONTANA TECH PROVIDED LAUNCHPAD TO PH.D. STUDY

Brent Sordo has about one year left of study before he’s awarded a doctorate in civil engineering from one of the
highest-ranked engineering programs in the world, and as he stands at the cusp of the finally launching the career of his dreams, he says his time at Montana Tech provided him with an outstanding foundation.

Sordo (B.S. Geological Engineering, 2019) completed his M.S. in civil engineering (with a geotechnical focus) from the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2021. He’s expected to graduate with his Ph.D. in the same field in 2024. It’s a journey that started with an inbox message nearly a decade ago.

“I first heard about Montana Tech through one of those random emails that most people just delete,” Sordo said. “It sounded really fun to me. It was a small school. I knew I wanted to do engineering at that point, and it had mountains, it was away from home, and it had a gym.”

Sordo, a native of Modesto, California, enrolled after he received the Frances and Ralph Mitchell scholarship. It is for students from Northern California majoring in geological engineering. Students receive $20,000 per year.

“It was kind of like serendipity,” Sordo said. “I got accepted very quickly, and they offered me the scholarship soon after that.”

When Sordo got to campus, he ended up in the office of Geological Engineering Professor Mary MacLaughlin.

“I remember Brent asking me to challenge him,” MacLaughlin said. “He said he’d heard I was one of the hardest professors on campus.”

Sordo was able to take graduate-level courses in his sophomore year. He also performed research in MacLaughlin’s lab and he believes that helped him stand out in the admissions process for his graduate program.

“When I applied for grad school, it seemed very easy,” Sordo said.

His graduate school application was also boosted by the fact that he won a 2018 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. The award is the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship awarded in America’s natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

“When I got to the University of Texas, I found I was more prepared than most other students,” Sordo said. “That’s because my geological engineering background was a very good fit for the geotechnical engineering program at UT. Most of my peers in the master’s program had a civil engineering background, so they had taken one geology class or one soil mechanics class, maybe in their bachelor’s degree. I had taken multiple geology classes, several geotechnical engineering and soil mechanicsfocused classes, so a good half of my master’s program ended up being review.”

Sordo has advice for students hoping to pursue a degree in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at Montana Tech.

“Seek out additional ways besides your coursework to get involved with the school,” Sordo said. “It’s a great way of gaining experience, and connections. Undergraduate research, internships, tutoring, being a TA, all those sorts of things really opened the door for me so I could build relationships with faculty and other people that allowed me to get so much support in things like Goldwater process.”

Sordo plans to work as a consultant for a few years receiving his Ph.D., but eventually wants to move to education and teach at a university.