Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field.    
     
In this Scholar-Athlete Spotlight, we are featuring Panther men's soccer player Parker Christensen, a junior who is majoring in Mechanical Engineering. A Dallas, Texas native, Parker has been named to the Sunshine State Conference Commissioner's and Florida Tech Athletic Director's Honor Roll in each of his first two years.
 
We sat down with Parker to ask him about what drew him to his major, how a family connection helped bring him to Tech, and what he enjoyed most about the Panthers' storybook 2022 season.
 
What's your major at Florida Tech and why did you choose this? Is it something that you've always wanted to do?    
I do mechanical engineering here and it's always been a big passion of mine to design stuff and create stuff. Ever since I was a kid, I loved building things with things like Legos, or I'd make buildings out of paper. So that sort of creative mindset I've always had.
 
What was it about Florida Tech that drew you here growing up in Dallas?   
My cousin who was on the women's team, Alyssa Bartle, sort of introduced me to the school. After looking at the academics and knowing that I already wanted to do mechanical engineering and seeing that they also had a successful men's soccer team, I was able to get in touch with Coach Chan, and we were able to work something out, and it ended up being a perfect fit.
 
How do you plan to use your degree after graduation?    
I hope to work for some aerospace corporation, maybe around here in Melbourne or just Florida in general. So, either an aerospace corporation or maybe something like Motorsports.
 
What are some of the exciting projects that you've been able to work on in classes here?   
Some of the projects that I've really liked doing has to do a lot with CAD, Computer Aided Design, which is pretty much just using a software to design and develop parts in software, and then you can use some other software to put those parts through simulation. So, any project that involves a lot of CAD work, I really enjoy doing.
 
Your season starts almost immediately after you return to school, how do you keep everything balanced once the season starts?
You certainly need to make sacrifices. I know a lot of my other teammates are also STEM majors, so they would also know the sort of dedication you have to have in both aspects. Some of the small things are like if we're away on a trip, doing homework in the hotel lobbies, you'll see a lot of players doing that or even something like doing homework on the bus on the way to away games, some small things like that here and there but overall, you just need to be dedicated to both facets of your life.
 
How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you're doing now and what do you take from the pitch that you apply to your studies?  
Being really disciplined about what you're doing and why you're doing it. Soccer specifically, has taught me how to really work with a team in general and get things done.
 
What advice would you give to an athlete coming to Florida Tech that has an interest in Mechanical Engineering?
You certainly need to be passionate for whatever sport you're doing as well as mechanical engineering. For me, it's easy because I've grown up doing both those things my entire life and I really enjoy doing both. I would just say you need to be 100% determined.
 
What have you enjoyed the most about your time at Florida Tech and with the men's soccer program?
Certainly, it would be playing in our NCAA Tournament game this year (against Lander). It was really special for me because that was one of the few games my dad went to and so getting to share that very special moment with him was really wonderful.