Engineering is in Ben Hallen's blood.
"Everyone in my family for two or three generations has been an engineer," said Hallen, who was appointed Student Council's first chief technology advisor last night.
Hallen said becoming an engineer was a natural choice for him and his younger brother Ed, who is a first year and a Rodman scholar like his older brother.
Coming to the University was also a natural choice for Hallen, who moved to Europe when he was 12 because his father, a chemical engineer, was transferred to Switzerland. To Hallen, the University represented all the American traditions he missed while growing up abroad.
Since he spent most of his life in Holland and Switzerland, Hallen had never seen a football game until he came to the University four years ago.
Instead, he developed skill at skiing - but not foreign languages, despite his multi-cultural upbringing.
Now when not attending University football games, Hallen skis, hikes, debates for the Jefferson Society and works for Student Council. He's been involved with Council for two years as a representative from the Engineering school and now as the new chief technology advisor.
As CTA, Ben will put his engineering skills to work on the Student Council server, developing long-term technology goals for Council and providing a student voice on University technology committees.
"Ben has been on Council before and he also knows a lot about the field of computers," Council President Joe Bilby said. "He looks like the ideal fit."
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ITC and the University webmaster are working on a student portal - a Web page students can customize with their own e-mail, to-do lists and other helpful University links. Hallen drew up the proposal for the site and now is advising ITC and the webmaster to develop its content.
"I'm looking forward to providing students and student groups with greater technology resources including enhanced service on the Council Web server such as the new student portal, the student arts Web site and Hoohock," Hallen said.
Last year, after three years as a University undergraduate engineering major, Hallen decided to graduate early so he could pursue his interest in computer science at the next level.
He said the decision was difficult because he would be skipping his fourth year. But it paid off - he now has a full fellowship.
"I sacrificed some things like Fourth-Year Bar Night," Hallen said, explaining that he has too much work to go to bar night as a graduate student.
He decided to graduate early because he would have taken mostly graduate classes as a fourth-year anyway and because his parents had been paying out-of-state tuition for three years.
Hallen said he does not want to stop his education once he picks up his graduate degree. Instead, he dreams of going into technology management and working with a team of people to come up with "a vision and then enacting that vision"
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