Brew, Patrick

Patrick Brew, a senior in the Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate/Graduate Accelerated Masters program from Short Pump, Virginia, has been involved in CEED since his freshman year when he was a member of the Galileo Living Learning community as a Dean’s Scholarship recipient.  Brew was a strong participant in the community his freshman year, served as a mentor to first year students, and as a member of the Professional Development committee during his sophomore year, and during his junior and senior years he was a mentor liaison and leadership team member for the community.  In his mentor liaison role, he designed training sessions for Galileo mentors and consulted a team of Galileo and Hypatia upperclassmen who served as mentors to first year students. Next year, Brew will continue his work with CEED by serving as a graduate teaching assistant primarily working with first year Galileo students in their first year seminar course. His experience with CEED has been impactful on both his growth as an engineer and his experience at Virginia Tech as a whole.

Brew’s passion for engineering was cultivated through participation in almost every level of the FIRST family of programs.  He was a participant of FIRST LEGO League for four years during elementary and middle school, FIRST Tech Challenge Team 93 for two years during middle and high school, and FIRST Robotics Competition Team 1086 for four years during high school. Today Brew is following through on the love of engineering and helping others by focusing his work on design challenges that contribute to the safety and effectiveness of first responders and military personnel. His graduate work will focus on aerospace applications of fracture mechanics in composite materials as it relates to aircraft survivability.

Brew has had numerous internship in the summers between years at Virginia Tech.  After his freshman year he worked at Genworth as an IT Intern on the middleware and server virtualization team working to optimize economic value of physical assets.  After his sophomore year he worked at Textron Systems in the Electronic Warfare department working to redesign military equipment to be more economical to produce, easier to maintain, and perform better in a wider spectrum of environments. After his junior year, he interned at Boeing through the Engineering Accelerated Hiring Initiative in the Military Rotorcraft department as a stress analyst specializing in fatigue, damage tolerance, and durability analyses. During his time at Virginia Tech, Brew has been a member of the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team where he currently serves as mechanical subteam leader.  His technical work on the team revolves around weld design and integration of the P3 electric motor.  Brew was also selected as one of only ten students on the student interview panel for the new dean of the College of Engineering during the fall of 2016.  He also serves as an undergraduate teaching assistant for the Department of Engineering Education where he is leading changes to the out of classroom support experiences provided to first year students. Other organizations he has participated in while at Virginia Tech include TREC Robotics Lab, University Honors, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Newman Catholic community, College of Engineering Dean’s Team, Mechanical Engineering Ambassadors, and Knights of Columbus.

Volunteering has been a keystone of Brew’s time at Virginia Tech.  His largest contribution is through the Knights of Columbus council where he has served in many leadership roles including Chancellor and Grand Knight. In addition to working with the Virginia Tech and Blacksburg communities to serve those in need, Brew led the 2016 Tonsure Drive.  During the Tonsure Drive, men from the council cut their hair into monk haircuts as fundraising goals were reached. This effort resulted in thousands of dollars raised for those affected by violence in the Middle East. Additionally, Brew passionately seeks out opportunities to support his fellow Hokies and live out Ut Prosim in his daily life.

Outside of his extracurricular, professional, and academic responsibilities, Brew is an avid racquetball player and a participant in intramural basketball and innertube water polo. He also is very active in the Newman Catholic campus ministry where he participates in evangelization and service events regularly throughout the semester. Upon graduation this May, Brew will be completing an internship with Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama doing damage tolerance and durability analysis for Space Launch System (SLS) and then returning to Blacksburg to complete the remaining year of his Masters degree.