When Todd Coleman got to the University of Michigan, it wasn’t long before his friends in engineering classes noticed that he seemed better prepared for his advanced courses than they were. “They would joke that they wanted to send their kids to whatever high school I went to,” he says, chuckling at the memory.

Todd was encouraged to take Advanced Placement courses in English, physics, math and computer science – and made high scores of 4 or 5 on all of them. “It was an incredible boost – when I came into college, I had earned enough course credits for sophomore status, which allowed me to double major in electrical engineering and computer engineering and still graduate on time,” he says.

Todd went on to get his Master of Science and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at MIT. Today, at 30, he is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is also affiliated with the Beckman Institute. When he is not teaching class or mentoring graduate students, he conducts research on wireless communications and neuroscience, trying to understand how the brain represents information. “We do know the brain communicates by neurons spiking,” he explains. “I am interested in the computation aspects, how the brain represents information.”

That curiosity comes natural to him – as a young boy, he was fascinated by how things fit together and building with toy Lego blocks was his favorite pastime. His teachers noticed he was good at math and science and recommended that he consider a career in engineering.

“When your teachers tell you to pursue a career, you ought to think about it,” he says. “Everyone is talented at something – I was fortunate that mine was math and science.”

Today as Professor Coleman at one of the top engineering schools in the country, he actively mentors aspiring engineering students – high school students admitted to the University of Illinois engineering program as well as students from underrepresented groups in engineering such as minorities and women. He advises the younger students to follow their passion, to take advantage of whatever cards have been handed to them and follow their talents and interests.

He is a strong advocate of Advanced Placement courses for high school students to reinforce their prospects in math and science. “All my AP teachers were excellent. I did not have a single bad teacher. You are so well prepared as a result,” he says. “It gives you a head start in college, so you can pursue a double major like I did, or you don’t have to take as heavy a course load so you can take part in campus organizations and have more free time, more flexibility in college.”

Most of his friends in high school were athletes, he says, but he never felt uncomfortable pursuing a different path. It enabled him to get summer internships at Intel, Microsoft and Silicon Graphics. Both of his parents were teachers and they encouraged his studies.

“There still seems to be some social stigma against math and science in terms of being nerdy, but I never looked at it that way,” he says. “I enjoyed it and I pursued it. It might be a somewhat vain perspective, but that’s where the money is. People in math and science generally make more money. Look at the entrepreneurs on top today and the people in technology development – Google is the biggest, hottest company in the country and it was started by a bunch computer science and engineering students. It’s worth keeping in mind when you are picking a major.”

*AP, Advanced Placement Program and SAT are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.