ISE grad to watch: George Valcarcel

George Valcarcel decided to study engineering because he wanted to learn how to solve problems in a methodical way. As a graduate of Ohio State’s Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE) Honors Program, he plans to apply his engineering skills to solve business problems.

“IBE is the best of both worlds, the arts and the science,” Valcarcel explained. “It’s something that I think will serve me well in the business world, to break down and structure problems with an engineering mindset.”

When selecting a university, the multidisciplinary IBE program made Ohio State stand out from other institutions, he said, including some Ivy League schools.

The IBE program brings together engineering and business students who work, study and network as a cohort throughout their undergraduate experience. In addition to his engineering courses, Valcarcel also took core business classes.

“IBE surrounded me with some of the best and brightest peers from both business and engineering,” he said. “Being around such a highly motivated group definitely encouraged me to step up my game in college and become the best student and early professional that I could be.”

The driven industrial and systems engineering major from Mason, Ohio, served as president of IBE’s Executive Student Board, which plans social and professional networking and skills development activities. He was also a University Innovation Fellow from 2018 to 2020. The highly selective program includes more than 250 students at 64 schools, and empowers student change-agents to increase campus engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking.

One of his biggest accomplishments was planning the Ohio Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Symposium, a partnership between the university and the Ohio Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center. Held in February, it brought together members of academia, industry and government for a day-long conference focused on unmanned aviation transport of passengers and goods in Ohio’s urban areas.

“We pulled together one of the biggest community-focused urban air mobility events to date with almost 200 people attending,” said Valcarcel. “It was a big success and a great wrap-up to my time at Ohio State.”

After graduation Valcarcel will return to McKinsey & Company, where he was an intern, to work full-time as a business analyst.

“It’s really exciting to go to a place where I have essentially an unparalleled learning opportunity,” Valcarcel said. “They say within consulting you might learn within one year what you would learn in a traditional corporate job in maybe five years. That’s going to build a certain problem-solving muscle and way that I look at the world.”

by Candi Clevenger, College of Engineering Communications, clevenger.87@osu.edu

See other engineering grads to watch here.