Wellington’s Juliana Wandell Graduates From FAU With A Double Major At Age 17 College Grad

Wellington teenager Juliana Wandell graduated last month from Florida Atlantic University with dual bachelor’s degrees in computer engineering and computer science. At age 17, she became FAU’s youngest student ever to accomplish this feat.

Wandell, who goes by the nickname “Jewels,” has been on her accelerated educational trajectory for a long time — since she was 24 months old, in fact.

“She started pre-kindergarten at St. Joseph’s Episcopal School when she was 2, and they bumped her into kindergarten,” recalled Rosie Wandell, her mother. “Headmaster Kay Johnson saw something in her.”

From there, it was elementary school, several years of home schooling, and then college credits that began accruing in the ninth grade.

“At FAU High School, you take high school courses, as well as some electives that count as college classes, like my Spanish and engineering classes,” Jewels said. “You then apply to FAU and, from 10th grade onward, take a full course load on campus.”

She didn’t start out with the goal of graduating from college at age 17. In fact, she initially tried to function at her own grade level.

“I got bored,” Jewels recalled. “If a school put me back in the grade I was supposed to be in for my age, I’d hate that I was repeating things. I’d wait until the last minute to do my assignments.”

When she was 11, Jewels tagged along with a friend — also home-schooled — who signed up for FAU High School’s Summer Engineering Camp. District Science Coordinator Allan Phipps took notice, urging her mother to get Jewels into the program.

Unfortunately, the fall term was due to start within days. Yet no mere schedule was going to interfere with their determination. Phipps introduced the family to Dr. Joel Herbst, superintendent of FAU Lab Schools District and FAU High School Associate Director David Kelly. The end result was that Jewels was admitted to the program.

“I was a lot more adult than those in my age range, and they wanted me to go directly into 10th grade, but I wanted a ninth grade ‘boot camp’ on campus first,” Jewels explained. “I wanted to enjoy myself, be a kid. On campus, I tried not to tell people how old I was most of the time, but you can only say ‘my parents drove me’ so many times before they started to ask, ‘What’s up with that?’”

Jewels was 15 when she graduated from FAU High School in May 2018, and 17 when she graduated from the university itself in May 2020 with a grade point average of 3.797.

“The academics weren’t easy all the time, but I liked being in the classes I was in,” she said. “My senior design project took a year, but I created virtual reality gloves with haptic feedback. Typical sensors don’t go over your hand, nor do they engage all your fingers. They may be able to grab an object, but mine can be integrated with games and tools and bend 0 to 90 degrees.”

Still, it’s not like there weren’t challenges along the way. “A lot of 20-year-olds don’t want to hang out with a 12-year-old, which I understand, but it took me a while to figure out that some of the students who were saying they were going to be my friend, were only going to be my friend until we were through with the course,” Jewels said. “They only wanted me to tutor them!”

So, although Jewels had plenty of “acquaintances” who would smile and wave if they passed her on campus, she didn’t make any true friends until later on in her educational career.

“It wasn’t the worst thing in the world,” she said. “People were nice. I always had someone to sit with and talk to — and I had kept some of my high school friends — but it wasn’t until I joined a sorority and a bunch of honor societies that I was able to build real friendships.”

Her parents Rosie and Eric Wandell said they never treated Jewels like a child; they treated her like an equal.

“My husband and I supported Jewels together. If it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have been able to do everything we did. He was a fireman, and I had a physical therapy practice. Jewels did her robotics things all over the state, and on the weekend was Stetson Young Scholars for high-achieving students,” Rosie recalled. “One or the other of us would drive her to the middle of the state Friday after school and drive her back on Saturday or Sunday — for three years. She would learn about history or rocket science from Stetson professors, and it wasn’t arranged by age groups. She would be 6 or 7 years old in with 10- and 11-year-olds making bottle rockets.”

“It was very challenging,” Eric added. “But we’ve got a fighter. She stands up for herself, and we are very family-oriented.”

One of her favorite pastimes came from her father.

“When I was really young, instead of bedtime stories, my dad would tell me stories surrounded around this character and let me make decisions for the character,” Jewels said. “It was Dungeons & Dragons — a very nerdy game — and I was his only player, but I loved it.”

At Jewels’ graduation from FAU, it would have been easy to find her in the crowd. Where some kids paint “Hi, Mom” or flowers on their mortarboards, Jewels was sporting the one with a high resolution 64×64 LED matrix flashing 50-plus tiny videos. She had used a USB-based microcontroller development system called a Teensy, her soldering skills, her cable management skills and her ability to edit programming using computer code to entertain onlookers with her own mini version of a sports arena Jumbotron — on her head.

At 17, she’s already sizing up Pratt & Whitney, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin and SpaceX of the aerospace industry in an effort to advance her interests in additive manufacturing (the reverse of using a lathe, which removes something to create an object) but is hoping to stay in South Florida, at least for now.

When not engaged in her studies, Jewels enjoys video games, Dungeons & Dragons and painting with watercolors, as well as hanging out with her teacup poodle Princess and her boyfriend, Ryan Scupt.

“She’s an only child,” Rosie said. “Otherwise, I don’t know what we would’ve done. I like to say, ‘God only gives you what you can handle.’”