STEM alumna

Former MESA student ambassador looks to the future in aerospace engineering.

I started my academic journey at Highline College as a first-generation, low-income student. I transferred to the University of Washington-Seattle to study aerospace engineering and will be graduating in June 2022.

I chose aerospace engineering because human space exploration is so cool and inspiring. Also, seeing something you built flying also amazes and excites me every time. Designing, building, and testing rockets, planes, drones, and other flying things are just the coolest thing.

For any student not sure about pursuing STEM or undecided about what they want to do, I would say never let anyone convince you of what program you should join. Figure out which option is the best based on what you have and go for it. You will learn a lot more than you expect regardless of which program you pick as long as you are driven to learn.

There are lots of resources at Highline that can support you on your journey. TRiO student services helped me find and apply for internships. Highline provided a safe environment with amazing and smart people to learn with. I found help from class workshops, MESA, the Math Resource Center, and office hours.

Doing Arduino home projects was the most beneficial activity I did outside of school. Some of the projects that I worked on in the aerospace department at UW involved a lot of Arduino. Having familiarity with the basics gave me an advantage in working on those projects.

My advice to students which I wish I had been given is that if you are doing engineering, keep your GPA above 3.5 as much as you can for at least the first two years so it is easy to find engineering internships for the junior year (most of them require 3.5 or above). Once you have an internship or two in your belt, you will have a solid resume by your senior year and with your senior projects it will be less hard to find jobs after graduation.