Matthew Montana Ortiz

Personal Information
   Major: 
   Graduation Date: 
   Hometown: 		 Civil Engineering
May 2004
Lathrop, CA

 TechnicalCommunication | Professional

Technical Skills

    As I proceed towards my degree as a civil engineer I hope to gain all the knowledge that I need in order to obtain good job placement and have fun along the way.  After all, college years are supposed to be the best years of your life.  I am currently trying to get involved in a couple of different clubs:

These are engineering clubs and I hope to get involved in order to help make my work come along easier and to make my social life more fun and enjoyable.  I am now involved MEP and hopefully some time next semester I will be involved in the MECHA club.  A friend of mine, Robert Davalos, is very active in many clubs and he is going to be the president of MECHA, so he told me to get involved as well, and I plan on getting involved.
    Recently in my intro to engineering lab we have worked on different class projects such as:  reverse engineering, the egg drop, electric motors, and measuring Burn's Tower.  All of these assignments required us to write reports and/or memos explaining our work as individuals and along with our group that we participated in.  I enjoy working in groups, it helps the members to come together to achieve a similar goal which makes it easier than working solo.  Our final project for the semester was the Cardboard Vessel Contest.  We were put into groups of four, my group members were Rick Clemons, Lauren Hampson, and Jasem Dhanhani.  The purpose of the project was to have us students work as part of a team to design and construct a buoyant vessel that could be navigated in a body of water.  The problem with this project was the fact that we could only use duct tape and cardboard, hence the name cardboard vessel contest.  Each team was required to race their vessel one lap of the UOP swimming pool, with a captain inside who could only paddle with their hands or feet.  If the vessel was able to survive the race, next they were required to participate in the endurance test which tested the vessel's 'buoyancy endurance' (how long the vessel will be able to stay afloat).

Communication Skills and Teamwork

    I have a couple of courses this semester that will help me to become a good communicator and work better with people.  These courses are Mentor 1 and Writing for College, in these classes we often have discussions on many different topics, ranging from the difference among humans to the deal about the air conditioning problem here on the UOP campus.  Also, in Intro to Engineering we always do group work which helps us to become more familiar with each other in class and outside of class we seem to be more open to each other.  A couple of friends and I have developed a kind of study group outside of class for Intro to Computer Science.  We meet in an area where we can concentrate and do our work with no distractions.  However, we often distract ourselves, we always bring up something totally different from the work that we are supposed to be doing and we venture off into totally abstract discussions.  We do still get our work done, it just takes a little longer, but working with others makes the work more easy to understand and it makes it easier to ask questions in class.
    I have made new friends by working with many different people in a couple of different classes.  We have to come together to achieve a similar goal of getting all of our work done and getting it all in on time.  Many times we had to meet outside of class in order to construct our cardboard vessel and we also had to meet to write our formal lab report.  I enjoy meeting and working with new people.  Hopefully, some of these people I will become good friends with and we can have a lasting friendship.

Professional and Personal Growth

    My name as you have already seen up above is Matthew Montana Ortiz, just call me Matt or whatever else you want, it doesn't really matter to me.  I am a freshmen, I graduated from Sierra High located in Manteca, CA.  My high school was not the best, just like everybody else's high school.  I enjoy playing basketball for fun, with my homies, and what not.  If you're interested at all, my favorite NBA team is the Los Angeles Lakers, my back up team is the New York Knicks, and (get this) my favorite college team is the UOP Tigers.  I may not look like it but I do have a little bit of skill, nothing like Michael Jordan, probably more like Spike Lee, ha ha.  I also, like to watch movies, watch WWF, play video games, marinate with the population, and I LOVE to do homework, yeah right.  My views may very well change throughout my years here at UOP as a studying engineer, so I will keep you all updated as I continue to grow and mature, or whatever.
    I feel that I have grown as this semester went on.  I have made a few changes in my life and probably the most significant, in my schooling, is the fact that I have changed from a computer engineer to a civil engineer.  I decided to change out of computer because when I actually looked back at my life I was never really interested computers, I mean they are cool and I do kind of know how to use them but I am not really fascinated by them.  I do not want to have to be doing something that I am not even interested in, so I switched.  Maybe I will stay in civil and become a civil engineer or maybe I will change majors again into a whole new school, I do not know.  That is what college is all about, deciding what you want to do with your life.

Last Updated:  12/10/99

Static Force Analysis: Staircase

Return to UOP Home Page