Student engineers take marching skills from the football field to the classroom

Tattooed on the wrist of Anastasia Thiele, a sixth-year biological engineering student, is Script Ohio with a twist. Instead of a dot on the “i,” Thiele sports a silhouette of a bird—a symbol that nods to the c-row, the name of her marching squad.

Adam Brott, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, commemorates his marching band experience differently. A video of dotting the “i” from Brott’s perspective made the rounds on social media after the Michigan State game, giving thousands of viewers the chance to experience the long-standing honor reserved for sousaphone players.

The Ohio State University Marching Band’s esteemed reputation attracts students all across campus, but roughly 30% of students in the marching band are engineering majors like Thiele and Brott. In fact, engineering students outnumber every other major in the marching band. With daily two-hour rehearsals, independent practice memorizing music, and 10-hour game days on top of a full engineering course load, the passion runs deep. It has to.

For Thiele, being a member of the Ohio State Marching Band is an accomplishment with miles of hard work behind it. She started playing the trumpet in seventh grade and saw the band perform for the first time in high school. Since then, Thiele wanted to be on the field herself, but she was delayed unfortunately by a severe knee injury her first year of college.

She initially wasn’t sure what she wanted to study, but she knew she enjoyed math, science and working with computers. Recovering from her knee injury sparked an additional interest.

“I started to like orthopedics because of my knee surgeries, but I didn’t want to go to medical school,” said Thiele. “I wanted to figure out what other way I could incorporate science and some of my other interests.”

From there, Thiele pursued biological engineering and is currently working on a project for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, developing a system to keep produce cool during Saturday markets. Thiele currently helps run clinical trials as well, where she can apply her various interests in one place.

Brott started playing tuba in sixth grade and, similar to Thiele, found himself hooked on music. He then followed both interests to Ohio State, participating in the marching band and carrying his love of physics and STEM classes into a mechanical engineering major. The small business his father co-owned during his childhood piqued an interest in the consumer end of engineering, which has led Brott to consider a master’s in business or product design.

Marching and engineering are closely linked for Brott, and he notes that the discipline exercised in band has definitely benefited his studies.

“Memorizing is very easy now,” said Brott. “Time management, too, and those methods carry over into classes.”

Thiele agrees that memorization and discipline are valuable skills learned in marching band that apply to engineering. Both feel that performances still top any nerves from big projects or tough exams.

For Brott, dotting the “i” remains one of the most nerve-wracking things he has done. ESPN initially approached the band with the idea to attach a GoPro to his sousaphone, which added to the pressure of more than 100,000 spectators in the Shoe—the most important being the family members that came to cheer him on.

Thiele was tapped unexpectedly to fill the position of a sick bandmate at last year’s Michigan game, which was easily the biggest game of the year (or any year). Like Brott, she was anxious, but noted that it was incredibly rewarding to see her family and fiancé in the stands.

“It was just the one moment that it all came together, all the hard work, everything,” said Thiele. “I got to do what I came here to do.”

Both Thiele and Brott will be traveling to Phoenix, Arizona with the Ohio State Marching Band as the Buckeyes take on the Clemson Tigers in the Fiesta Bowl on Saturday, December 28.

by Brianna Long, College of Engineering student communications assistant