Tyler and Davis Bentinck-Smith
At roughly a year and a half apart, brothers Tyler and Davis Bentinck-Smith share many loves, including sports, chemical engineering and Mississippi State.
Tyler, the elder brother who is graduating this May with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and minor in business administration, said he and Davis attended ̫ӳ football and baseball games growing up. The decision to leave their native New York to pursue undergraduate studies in ̫ӳ’s James Worth Bagley College of Engineering and its Dave C. Swalm School of Chemical Engineering ultimately was influenced by the campus’ home-away-from-home atmosphere.
“̫ӳ was the only school we applied to,” Tyler said. “It is an incredibly inviting campus with friendly people. I love the weather here, too.”
“We had friends in New York who were picking from multiple schools,” Davis said, “but we pretty much knew we were coming here once we got accepted.”
The brothers said they come from a family of loyal ̫ӳ supporters and fans, including their parents who met as students. Their mother, Suzi, is a Department of Communication alumna, and their father James also holds an ̫ӳ chemical engineering degree. Their father, now a plant manager for Evonik in Houston, Texas, inspired his sons to pursue the same field.
“I like the flexibility of a chemical engineering degree because you can do different things—graduate school, work in industry or go into sales, which is what I’m looking to do now,” said Tyler, who completed a co-op at Southern Ionics in West Point.
Along with preparing students for co-op and industry work experiences, Davis appreciates that ̫ӳ provides undergraduate students opportunities to conduct research alongside knowledgeable faculty. He is excited to have recently joined research groups led by Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Computational Engineering Thomas E. Lacy Jr. and Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Santanu Kundu.
“You can see pictures in Power Point slides, but it’s important to see where everything is connected,” Davis said. “I’m working under one of Dr. Lacy and Dr. Kundu’s graduate students, and I’m learning that you can be a chemical engineer if you’re willing to put in the work.”
Getting connected to faculty who have extensive practice in the classroom and in the field has made the ̫ӳ experience even more beneficial and enjoyable, Tyler agreed.
“State does a great job of exposing you to professors with different perspectives, and I think that makes things more interesting,” he said. “There’s a lot of collaboration in the chemical engineering program. Learning how to work in groups is important because you’ll always be working with other people on the job.”
