When Spencer Yacuboski ’21 thought about applying to college, he imagined attending the University of Michigan or MIT. Then he met the professors at Wilkes.
“The professors here are very easy to reach out to and become friendly with,” he says. “They are really great.”
During his senior year of high school, he took classes at Wilkes as part of the Young Scholars Program. He soon realized that the close-knit atmosphere at Wilkes was more to his liking than the less personal environment at a larger university.
“I know almost all of my professors on quite the personal level, and I learned very easily from them,” says Yacuboski, who is from Shickshinny, Pennsylvania.
The flexibility at Wilkes has allowed Yacuboski to challenge himself. “The professors have been excellent in allowing me to take whatever classes I have wanted, and allowing me to test my limits.” He is majoring in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and physics.
Yacuboski is career-focused and is eager to learn from teachers with real-world experience. “All of the professors have extensive knowledge in their fields and bring a lot to the table,” he says.
Robert R. Taylor, chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Physics, has been a strong influence.
“Professor Taylor is an excellent example of someone who was an engineer in training who worked his way up through Lockheed Martin to have a very successful career in management, and he presents a good role model to a lot of the students here,” Yacuboski says.
Industry experience is typical of professors at Wilkes. “They all seem to have a great knowledge of what is required in the field, and work very hard to teach us students what it is that we will need to know, and how things will be done in industry. I find this to be incredibly helpful,” he says.
During summer 2020, Yacuboski interned at Procter & Gamble. At the end of his internship, P&G offered him a job. “I struck the jackpot,” he says. “I absolutely loved my experience.”
Wilkes prepared him well for the transition from the classroom to the real world. “Getting an engineering education is like learning a language,” he says. “The education gives you the tools to communicate with the people you work with. The internship helps you see why you are completing your foundational information for your degree.”
As he completes senior projects in both physics and engineering (where he’s working on a beer-brewing machine), Yacuboski feels confident his college experience was right for him. “Wilkes seems to have been the perfect storm of education and opportunity that I have wanted.”
