Biomedical engineering student driven to help others

I first started looking at engineering when there was a career project in my junior English class in high school. People usually did the project on what they wanted to do as a career and you had to talk about whether or not it was a good fit for you. I really wanted to do something that would help people in a tangible way. And my mom had always thought that I would be an engineer because I like to know how things work. So I was looking up careers I could do with that and that's what got me into biomedical engineering.

With biomedical engineering, there's only so many colleges that have that major. I did some college visits and ended up narrowing it down to the University of Cincinnati and another school. UC had the better co-op program and more support in co-op. I grew up in Richmond, Kentucky, so I am very grateful for the metropolitan rate of tuition.

In my first couple of years at UC, I was very involved with Engineers Without Borders. I was the treasurer and I also went on a trip with them to Tanzania where we worked on building the water systems that our fellow club members had designed. That was really interesting and I got to climb inside a water tank as part of drilling the holes in it to get the connections.

Engineers Without Borders benefits rural communities in Tanzania by providing them with things such as access to clean drinking water, sanitation structures like handwashing stations and latrines, and even new schoolhouses. As treasurer, I made sure flights, housing, ground transportation and other costs for our international implementation trips were paid for to allow our travelers to concentrate on putting our plans into practice.

I think one of the key takeaways I got from that trip was how important the critical path is where if one thing doesn't get done then the rest just won't happen and we really need to balance our workload so that someone always has something to do and they're not just sitting around waiting. I also see this in my co-ops with production lines and other things like that.

I am now more involved in Mortar Board (national honor society), where I was treasurer last year. I also joined oSTEM, which is Out in STEM, and this year I'm the president. I'll be going to the National Mortarboard Conference in August, and then there's an O4U (Out For Undergrad) Engineering Conference, so I'll be going to that. 

I have gone to the Makerspace for some manipulation of wood certifications and I'm excited to get the chance to do some woodworking projects there on campus this year. I might get another certification on their laser engraving machine. I'm also in the Makers Club.

For my future career, I'll be looking for production engineering or continuous improvement, or maybe quality engineering. I think I want to be up near Iowa, which is where my grandma is and where my mom plans on moving soon when she retires. From what I've seen, there are usually a lot of opportunities in Minnesota for biomedical engineering, so I'll probably be looking in that area. And I'm going to be looking for somewhere that has a tuition assistance program, so that if I decide to come back for a master's degree that I would have assistance there. But for now I'm just going to go into industry.

I want to start looking for a full-time job for after graduation pretty soon here. I would like to get things settled so I can kind of secure a plan. But if the start date is flexible I might like to push it off a little bit and then maybe take a two-week trip around Europe. 

Featured image at top: Linda Yoder (center, wearing the hat), and other UC students and community members in Tanzania pose for a picture after completing a water project. Photo/provided.