Currently, I am studying at Drexel University. Drexel as an environmental engineering major. Through my involvement in programs like Women in Natural Sciences (WINS) and the Program for Future Environmental Scientists and Stewardship (ProFESS), the natural sciences have been a significant part of my life. When I entered college, I was initially choosing between environmental science and environmental engineering as my major. I ended up picking the engineering route because I like problem-solving. I want to actively participate in projects or organizations that improve or preserve nature. And majoring in environmental engineering will make it easier for me to enter the environmental service field. Such as the wastewater or drinking water treatment industry or help in remediation or improvement projects. At this moment, I am on my first co-op, interning at the Philadelphia Water Department as an engineering intern at the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant, in other words, a wastewater treatment plant. Combined with the other two wastewater treatment plants, we treat all of Philadelphia including some of the surrounding counties' wastewater and stormwater. As the engineering intern, I mainly assist the process engineer, but I also work closely with other engineers, crew chiefs, and operators of the plant. It takes a whole team to manage the plant. My responsibilities are plant checking, library management, data input and data processing, microbiology, assisting managers and operators in their jobs, and lastly learning. I do plant checking once a week for each of the different processes. It is broken down into primary, secondary, and final processes. It is mainly a maintenance check on the equipment plus checking how well the plant is performing. There are indicators of how well the plant is doing. You can predict the numbers from the lab by observing the color of the mixed liquor, the smell in the different process areas, and the foaming of the initial and final discharge. For library management, I organize the blueprints and record them in the database to track which blueprints are in the library and which are not in the online water department database. I also compile data from different sources into an Excel sheet and process it so the process engineer can use it to write his yearly report. My favorite part is microbiology because I get to see what microbes are living in the sludge under the microscope. The microbes are a lot of fun to observe because the different microbes behave differently. Each week the population differs slightly compared to the previous week. Doing the microbiology also gives us a snapshot of the performance in the biological process besides looking at the lab data. Most recently, the process engineer had me help him write the standard operation procedure manuals for plant-specific tasks such as how to drain the tanks. These are my current responsibilities and there are always new tasks that come now and then. I have three more months left of this experience. I am enjoying it so far; almost every week there is something new to experience.

My aspiration is in the environmental restoration and conservation field. I want to preserve our natural world and the resources so the future generations can enjoy it. And as the old saying goes, “leave the place in a better place than when you arrive on it” has led me thinking beyond preserving the natural world. Many places have been damaged and changed because of human activities in our pursuit of growth. With this amazing growth, human lives have definitely advanced and currently most of the human population can enjoy a better quality of life. The problem arises when it becomes unsustainable and damaging to the environment that we live in. I envision a future where our growth is sustainable for our future. Where we can manage our resources well and not deplete it to the point that future generations of living beings can’t enjoy it. All hope is not lost as there’s been recent projects I’ve been keeping up with and I can see the potential of their projects in restoring/preserving the environment. For example, the Mossy Earth channel on Youtube shows how their crowdfund effort and their work with the government have led to amazing restoration/preservation of varying environments. The first video I saw of their project is restoring the floodplain forest of Slokvia. This brought back many wildlife and provided unique resources to those wildlife that didn’t cease to exist because of the disappearance of the seasonal flood caused by the construction of the dam. There is also research in reintroduction of mussels into the U.S. rivers currently with partnership between different states. It is because of these projects going on that motivates me in wanting to do more than preserving the environment. The possibility of improving the environment is my ultimate goal. The improvement impact can be as small as a neighborhood. But there is always a possibility of increasing its impact to the whole world. I find that to get involved in that field, environmental scientist or environmental engineer would be the route to go. I’m currently studying environmental engineering and either minor in ecology or sustainability to help develop the tool set in solving problems in environmental conservation/restoration. With my engineering courses, I find that a lot of them use Pearson textbook and the resources on it. I find that the study area with its generating problems related to the topic helped a lot for my study for that specific class. The problem with it is that it costs a lot of money once you add up all the textbooks from multiple classes that use that service. Furthermore, I can’t sell the online textbook to someone else when I don’t need it anymore like a physical textbook can to help save some money for a different textbook. Sadly, I can’t even access it when I am not taking the class related to that topic even if there’s some amount of time left for the service I paid for. And the Pearson textbook I have to pay for is a limited time license. So this scholarship will definitely help me cover the cost of materials for my class for at least 1 or 2 quarters at least. And if I can save enough money, I can buy a better laptop so I can code for my coding courses without it burning up since it’s about 6 going to 7 years old. It’s amazing how it still works pretty smoothly and not slow when processing information.