Biomedical engineer charts unique course to Herman Schneider Medal
Teresa Hawk explored numerous engineering disciplines as a co-op student
Diagnosed with diabetes at eight years old, Teresa Hawk always wanted to make an impact in health care.
Her affinity for math and science and unique understanding of what it’s like to be a patient led the fifth-year student at the University of Cincinnati to pursue biomedical engineering.
Before graduating from UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science in May 2025, she was awarded the college's 2025 Herman Schneider Medal, honoring her hard work and commitment to the university’s cooperative education, or co-op, program.
Teresa Hawk received the 2025 Herman Schneider Medal for her exceptional work on co-op. Photo/Provided
For Hawk, biomedical engineering was not initially on her radar. Her parents are civil engineers, and she wanted to do something different. She considered nursing, physical therapy, and other medical-based careers, but quickly learned she couldn’t stomach the ‘blood and guts’ involved. Returning to her strong foundation in STEM, her parents advised her to give biomedical engineering a shot.
“In the beginning, I wasn’t sure if engineering was right for me. I only decided my major a week or so before applying. I wanted to be able to get out there and try a bunch of things, and that made the co-op program really enticing to me,” Hawk said.
Cooperative education was invented at UC more than 100 years ago by Dean Herman Schneider, for whom this award is named. Through UC’s top-ranked co-op program, students alternate between semesters in the classroom and semesters working full-time in industry or research to gain hands-on engineering experience in their field to prepare them for a postgraduate career in engineering.
At Cook Medical, Teresa Hawk was part of the research and development team. Photo/Provided
Hawk’s first co-op experience was at Cook Medical, a medical equipment manufacturer in Bloomington, Ind. She was part of the research and development team in the urology department. She spent the semester working on a disposable, flexible ureteroscope and its accompanying camera-controlled unit for ureteroscopy procedures to diagnose and treat urinary tract problems like kidney stones. She assisted with control documentation creation and maintenance and was introduced to coding and code software development.
“The exposure to mechanical and coding aspects of medical devices was something I really enjoyed. I was excited and confident about where I could go next,” she said.
The following semester, Hawk took Medical Device Design I, a course within CEAS, and was able to apply the real-world knowledge she gained on co-op to her classwork.
For her second co-op, she returned to Cincinnati, spending a semester at Ethicon as a quality engineer in their emerging technologies department. There, Hawk was responsible for asset management, spending her time overseeing a tool used for collecting and storing documentation of software used within Johnson & Johnson MedTech companies worldwide. She had the opportunity to communicate with asset owners all over the world, assist people through the process, and update procedures for a more cohesive process.
Eager to learn as much as she could, Hawk asked for more work and was tasked with using R and R Shiny code and made her first code contribution in industry.
Hawk’s mentors at Ethicon were influential. They discussed with her the details of the degree and what she’d like to do. At the time, she was part of the Accelerated Engineering Degree Program, or ACCEND, where she concurrently pursued a master of engineering degree in biomedical engineering with her undergraduate degree. However, after speaking to her mentors and reflecting on her co-op experiences, she made the change to master of engineering in mechanical engineering, which allowed her to delve deeper into the design aspects she enjoyed in her co-ops.
“Mentorship is something so important to me. In the moments on co-op when I felt like I couldn’t do it, I sought out mentorship and had people who were in my corner backing me,” Hawk said.
After connecting with the company at a conference for women in computing, Eli Lilly interviewed Teresa Hawk and offered her a co-op position on the spot. Photo/Provided
Her third co-op position came to her unexpectedly. Through the Association for Computing Machinery for Women (ACM-W), she attended the Grace Hopper Celebration, which is the largest women in coding conference in the world. There, students can network with employers, attend seminars, and connect with people in the industry from around the globe.
At the conference, Hawk connected with Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis. Hawk spoke to the representatives, submitted her resume, and was told she’d hear back in a few weeks. Later that night, when scrolling through her spam emails, she saw a message from Eli Lilly inviting her for an interview the next morning.
“I interviewed the next day and the same night, I got a text from the VP telling me they wanted me as a co-op the next semester,” she said.
At Eli Lilly, she was an information and digital systems intern, assisting with web application development, something completely new to her.
“I was the only intern that wasn’t a computer science or IT student,” she said. “Working on an application was something super out of my comfort zone, but it was a lot of fun.”
The co-op program gives students the opportunity to experiment with different disciplines through hands-on experiences in the engineering industry. Many students discover their niche while working on co-op, enabling them to hit the ground running after graduation.
I had a mentor tell me to go fail. Having that support and the ability to be authentically who I am allowed me to learn so much
Teresa Hawk, UC biomedical engineering student
Teresa Hawk spent two semesters on co-op at STERIS. Photo/provided.
For her final co-op position, she spent two semesters at STERIS in Cleveland, where she led a data project supporting the launch of the company’s all-electric surgical table. Her work included verification and reliability testing, along with documentation that helped bring the product to market. Along with the product development project, she was tasked with taking the existing data from the surgical tables and turning it into something useful.
“I was leading a team of full-time engineers through this, and it was a learning process for me. There were some failed attempts, it was a very daunting experience, but working through it, in the end it was a very rewarding experience,” Hawk said.
She shared that in the beginning, she struggled with impostor syndrome, not having any engineering experiences or hobbies growing up. But above all else, she was ready to learn everything she could.
“I had a mentor tell me to go fail,” she said. “Having that support system and the ability to be authentically who I am allowed me to learn so much.”
On campus, she serves as a CEAS Ambassador, giving her the opportunity to share her CEAS experience with prospective students and families. She recalls when she visited UC as a high school student, she was able to sit in on a class. Now, five years later, she’s a student in that class and it all has come full circle for her. She also served as the president of Enable Cincy, a student organization that bridges the gap between engineering and medicine, providing free assistive devices and prosthetics to patients in need — a cause she’s deeply passionate about. She is a member of Phi Sigma Rho, an engineering sorority she describes as a strong support system throughout her time at UC. Additionally, she is heavily involved in H2O church in Cincinnati, sharing that it has provided a community for her over the years.
Hawk will graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering with a minor in computer science, as well as a master of engineering degree in mechanical engineering. She is thankful for each of her co-op experiences, as well as the mentors, peers, and professors that supported her along the way.
“Co-op taught me to be confident,” Hawk said. “Being able to feel good about the things I’m learning in classes, understanding their value, and realizing I do have the background, and I can do hard things.”
Featured image at top: Teresa Hawk received the 2025 Herman Schneider Co-op Medal. Photo/Provided
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