By Tyler Hansen
Of all the months you’ve lived and will live, you’ll never forget this one — June 2021.
It’s the month you officially become a graduate of Oregon State University, the one in which you’ll put a celebratory bow on all of your hard work and perseverance.
You’re primed to enter a community of thousands of Oregon State Ecampus graduates who are out there, changing the world.
And they’re ready for you to join them.
People who earn their degrees online with Oregon State work in all industries, and their work impacts communities in the U.S. and internationally. Here are a few examples of recent OSU Ecampus graduates and what they’re up to.
Just like with them, we’re eager to celebrate your success in the coming months and years.
Albert Diaz
Following a career as a nuclear machinist in the Navy, Diaz landed a job at Tesla Motors, helping to engineer the cars of the future. He enrolled online with Oregon State around the same time to earn a postbaccalaureate degree in computer science. (He was inspired to follow in his wife Samantha’s footsteps as an Ecampus graduate.)
Now Diaz works in cybersecurity for a premier science and technology laboratory in the Bay Area.
Amanda Kniepkamp
M.Eng. in Industrial Engineering (Engineering Management)
Kniepkamp is driven by a desire to be her best — for personal gain and to benefit a larger team. Her team is NASA, and her lab-based job is to fly spacecraft to the moon, Mars and beyond.
To enhance her skills in a hyper-competitive workplace, she earned an engineering management master’s degree online with Oregon State. Within weeks of graduating, she was promoted to team lead of NASA’s Deep Space Network.
Joseph Peters
Master of Natural ResourcesA lot of people say they want to give back to their community. Few deliver on their promises as well as Peters continues to do.
He’s a natural resources policy representative for the Squaxin Island Tribe, to which he belongs. He also works with other tribes and the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to resolve issues related to natural resources conservation.
His mission to provide knowledge to tribal communities meant he first needed more knowledge of his own. That’s why he earned a fisheries management graduate certificate online and then came back to OSU Ecampus for a master’s degree in natural resources.
Taniah Johnson
B.S. in Human Development and Family Sciences
Johnson didn’t think she was smart enough for college. Just the thought of applying to learn online with Oregon State intimidated her. Fast forward a few years, and there are few success stories as awe-inspiring as hers.
Now she’s an Oregon State graduate, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and an aspiring school counselor — all while raising two young kids as a single mom and building new career opportunities.
Find all the latest information about Oregon State’s 2021 graduation celebration and learn more about your fellow Ecampus classmates.
