Student Spark Story
Patrick Mishreky
Mechanical Engineering Major
UC Berkeley
Ignited Teacher: Jessica Porter, CTE Engineering
Student Spark Story
Patrick Mishreky’s engineering career kicked off as most engineering careers do – with a fascination for LEGOs and a disregard for the instructions on the box. A key stepping stone between LEGOs and his mechanical engineering major at UC Berkeley was his high school engineering pathway with Ignited alumna Jessica Porter.
Jessica started her career in engineering and is now a Career Technical Education instructor at Castro Valley High School. She has kept her industry knowledge current through experiences like Ignited’s Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Experience Week in 2022, where she spoke with practicing professionals and toured current worksites.
“Her story and her background in industry helped connect that bridge between what we study in class and how we would use that later on outside the classroom,” Patrick recalls. In the pathway, all classes were geared toward engineering and provided in-depth exposure to the industry. The small cohort of engineering pathway students were encouraged to work towards solutions as a team, engage in friendly competition, get familiar with software used in actual jobs, and cultivate a design thinking mindset.
Patrick went to Jessica daily for help improving his projects, spent lunches in her classroom discussing engineering concepts, and asked for her support in starting a civil engineering club at the school. During his senior year, Jessica asked her students to create a project and present it with a pitch deck like an engineer would – and Patrick became so invested in his project that he almost turned it into a startup company. “You can tell that she actually cared about her students… I felt like she was always trying to build her own relationship with me and all the other students.”
With Jessica’s guidance, Patrick built out his resume and LinkedIn profile to highlight his classroom engineering experience to recruiters, and he gained confidence through the mock interviews she arranged between industry professionals and her students. Patrick’s first biomedical engineering internship at UCSF opened the door for subsequent engineering internships every summer, including at East Bay Municipal Utility District, Google, and Helix Electric. In turn, these internship experiences helped him win the Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholarship, the most prestigious scholarship in the UC system.
Patrick is grateful to Jessica Porter and the other teachers in his high school engineering pathway who interlaced his classroom with industry content and software like AutoCAD and SolidWorks. They gave him the qualifications to obtain engineering positions, as well as a confidence in his chosen career path. “The teachers looked at us as a whole student, as young professionals,” Patrick says. “I’ve been in engineering my whole life, ever since 8th grade… I know that I like engineering itself, because I’ve had those engineering experiences.”
Patrick plans to pursue a career in the aerospace industry upon graduation, building off his recent experiences interning at Machina Labs and leading Berkeley’s Space Technologies and Rocketry (STAR) Airframe team in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition.