The course work for this program was a combination of theory and practical courses. For example theoretical courses such as Truth, Deduction and Computation, Design and Analysis of Algorithms and Formal Methods in Software Engineering laid the foundation to information theory and computation as an abstract subject. To complement that, more practical and hands on courses included Advanced Operating Systems, System on Chip Verification and Computational Intelligence. These courses went into implementation techniques for specific architectures with theoretical concepts as the foundation.

The course work for this degree is made up of a solid mathematical foundation for computers and electronics. Discrete Math, Vector Calculus and Differential Equations were requirements for courses on Circuit Theory, Solid State Chemistry and Optics and Thermodynamics. The last year of advanced courses touched concepts more practical such as Computer Architectures, Device Electronics and Logic Design. For my senior cap stone project as a 4 member team we designed an implementation of the MIPS architecture synthesized into a Xilinx FPGA that would encode and decode messages transmitted over the air using custom analog circuitry.

During this time I also did some research work with faculty that explored regenerative computing devices for outter space research, this was accomplished by a custom self healing architecture on FPGA hardware where the system could detect defects induced by cosmic rays and at runtime trigger a sub-component re-synthesis in order to provide a defect free replacement of the failed component.

During this exploratory time after high school I took classes on photography and film making, later on I enrolled and completed the EMT program which opened the door for me to go into the emergency medical field as well as the fire fighter program in Arizona. However instead I decided to go into a STEM field after finding a facility with mathematics while taking General Education Curriculum classes. The college also offered computer related programs one of which was the Networking Certificate that I completed during this time and later used it to get a network manager job that carried me while getting my bachelors degree later on.