Jorge Zurita Valdebenito

Indiana State University may have been the logical choice for Chile native Jorge Zurita Valdebenito, GR`19, whose his sister and brother-in-law are faculty members at the institution.

But further research into State’s program offerings uncovered that the robotics and electronics programs would also provide a strong pull that would bring Zurita Valdebenito to Terre Haute.

At State, Zurita Valdebenito has had the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant within the electronic fundamentals in the department of electronics and computer engineering technology and it is paying off for his post-graduation goals.

“My future plans are in teaching. I would love to pursue a PhD program in Electrical Engineering or something close to it,” Zurita Valdebenito said. “I have found support for my dreams from faculty in department like Bob English and Edie Wittenmyer. They are my mentors; I will be eternally grateful for helping me a lot to address my goals and clarify what really want to do in order to get there.”

His courses are also helping provide the hands-on experience that mold the best engineers. In the spring semester of 2019, Zurita Valdebenito worked on several class project that gave him experience dealing with real-life problems that required real-life solutions.

“Last semester, I was in a class with William Clyburn where my group have to simulate an industrial process and I was responsible for leading the software/hardware team and programming the industrial logic controllers,” he said. “It was a nice experience dealing with people and it will be helpful for future career because in the engineering and industrial world, to control any process you have to know how to program controllers to make anything work.”

He also had experience in creating a device to measure and track flooding level in real time on the Wabash River.

“That was a good project because we had to do it in a deadline and it allowed us to help people, too,” Zurita Valdebenito said. “As engineers, our job is to serve people and help make their life easier and better and that project did just that.”