My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am a rising sophomore at Morehouse College studying Applied Physics through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, with a focus on Mechanical Engineering. My path to becoming an educator does not start in a K-12 classroom, but it is just as real a commitment. My long-term goal is to earn a PhD in engineering and become a professor at a Historically Black College or University, teaching the next generation of Black engineers the same way this generation of professors is currently shaping me. That goal did not come from nowhere. This past summer, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago, contributing to a federally funded research project on advanced magnetic sensing technology. I inherited a system that had been broken for months, diagnosed the problem, and brought it back online, then optimized a magnet design to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. What stuck with me was realizing how much I enjoyed explaining what I had learned to teammates, breaking down a complex optimization pipeline into something someone else could use. I started to understand that engineering and teaching were not separate ambitions for me. They were the same ambition, aimed in two directions. I already have real experience turning that instinct into practice. For three summers, I taught drone technology to high school students preparing for their FAA certification exams, watching 90 percent pass on their first attempt. Many arrived doubting whether a technical field was meant for them, and part of my job was proving otherwise through patience and genuine investment in their progress. At Morehouse, I have continued that work through the National Society of Black Engineers, helping organize a mentorship panel connecting first year students with upperclassmen who could speak honestly about how hard this path is. The statistics on representation in engineering education are stark, not unlike the ones motivating this scholarship in K-12 classrooms. Black engineering faculty remain a small fraction of professors in technical fields, and that absence has real consequences for which students see themselves as capable of this kind of work. I know what it means to sit in a physics class and realize a professor who looks like me is explaining something difficult with total command of it. I want to be that presence for future students, not as an exception, but as an expected part of what an engineering department looks like. My path to the classroom runs through the lab first. I plan to complete Morehouse's Dual Degree Engineering Program, transfer to complete an electrical engineering degree at a partner institution, and pursue a funded PhD focused on sensing and signal technologies. I do not see the years of technical research ahead as separate from my goal of becoming an educator. I see them as the foundation an HBCU engineering professor needs, real research, real failures worked through, real problems solved, so that when I eventually stand in front of a classroom, I am teaching from lived expertise rather than theory alone. I want my impact as an educator to look like what I already try to model for younger students today, patience with people still figuring things out, honesty about how hard the work actually is, and a genuine belief that where a student starts does not determine what they are capable of building. That is the standard I intend to bring into a classroom of my own one day.

My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am a rising sophomore at Morehouse College studying Applied Physics through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, with a focus on Mechanical Engineering. Reading about Kalia D. Davis, her work ethic, her athletic drive, her community involvement, her faith, I recognized a lot of myself in her story, and I think that recognition is exactly why this scholarship matters to me. Sports have shaped who I am the same way running shaped Kalia's life. I played defensive end and tight end in high school football, and during my sophomore year I suffered a traumatic concussion along with a fractured shoulder that pulled me out of school for a month and cut me off from my team. That injury taught me something I still carry with me, that persistence matters more than raw talent, and that real strength often looks like quietly rebuilding something piece by piece rather than a single dramatic comeback. I think Kalia understood that same lesson through track and cross country, the discipline of showing up every single day whether or not anyone is watching. Community service has run alongside my academics the same way it ran through Kalia's life. I earned my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Award, planning a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. For three summers, I taught drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, watching 90 percent of them pass on their first attempt. At Morehouse, I have continued that same commitment through the National Society of Black Engineers, organizing a mentorship panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who can guide them honestly through a demanding path. Academically, I have tried to hold myself to the same standard of excellence Kalia was known for. This past summer, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern on a federally funded magnetic sensing research project, where I inherited a broken system, brought it back online, and pushed a magnet optimization pipeline to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. I did not get there by being naturally gifted at every part of it. I got there the same way Kalia earned her full ride and thrived on her university's executive board, by refusing to let a setback be the final word. This scholarship would help me in a very concrete way. As the first person in my family to attend a private HBCU, I do not have family financial contributions to fall back on, and the majority of my education is currently financed through student loans. Every scholarship I receive directly reduces that debt and gives me more room to focus on the work itself, research, mentorship, and the kind of hands on technical projects that are shaping my future, rather than constantly worrying about how to afford the next semester. What draws me most to Kalia's story is that her excellence was never separate from her care for other people. She was someone her peers could count on for encouragement, someone who used her strength to lift others rather than just herself. That is the same standard I try to hold myself to, whether I am mentoring a nervous freshman, teaching a kid to safely fly a drone, or simply showing up consistently for the people counting on me. I would be honored to carry a piece of her legacy forward through this scholarship, continuing the same commitment to excellence, service, and faith that clearly defined her life.

I thank God every single day, quite literally, for allowing me to wake up and breathe. That might sound like a small thing to say, but it is not small to me. Growing up in church, serving as an usher, taught me that gratitude is not a feeling you wait to have, it is a practice you choose every morning, and I have carried that practice with me every day since. Before I do anything else, I recognize that waking up itself is not guaranteed, and that recognition shapes how seriously I take everything that follows. That same faith is where my strength comes from when I am facing something genuinely difficult. Philippians 4:13 has stayed close to me for years, the idea that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I do not experience that verse as a promise that things will be easy. I experience it as a reminder that I am never facing hard things purely on my own strength, and that has mattered to me in very concrete moments, not just abstract ones. During my sophomore year of high school, a serious football injury pulled me out of school for a month, left me isolated from my team, and made even basic reading feel impossible for a while. I did not know if I would fully recover, academically or otherwise. What carried me through that period was not confidence in myself alone. It was the belief, grounded in my faith, that I was being strengthened for something even in a season that felt like pure loss. I held onto that same belief while planning my Eagle Scout project, coordinating 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC, a project that tested my patience and organization more than almost anything I had done before. My mother instilled a pursuit of excellence in my brother and me that never left room for half effort, and my faith is what has kept that pursuit from turning into pure self-reliance. I do not believe I am supposed to carry ambition on my own strength. I believe I am supposed to work hard and trust that the strength to keep going, especially when a project fails, a body needs to heal, or a problem refuses to be solved, comes from somewhere beyond just willpower. That belief is already shaping how I approach engineering. This past summer, working as a Quantum Systems Intern on a federally funded research project, I inherited a system that had been broken for months and spent weeks pushing through failure after failure before it finally worked. I did not experience that process as pure frustration. I experienced it the same way I experience most hard things now, as an opportunity to lean on the same strength that gets me out of bed every morning in the first place. I want my faith to keep shaping my career the same way it has shaped everything else, not as a separate part of my life, but as the foundation underneath all of it. Waking up and being able to breathe is not something I take for granted, and neither is the strength that faith gives me to keep working through whatever stands in front of me next.

Growing up in a low-income household, I learned early on that resources were scarce, but determination had to be abundant. Being the first in my family to attend an HBCU, I faced financial and academic hurdles that could have easily derailed my dreams of becoming an engineer. Instead, these challenges forged my perseverance. When I struggled during my first semester at Morehouse College and had to withdraw from Calculus I, I refused to let the setback define me. I retook the course the following semester while balancing a rigorous Applied Physics course load, proving to myself that resilience is my greatest asset. I know what it means to make the most out of limited resources, which is why my engineering focus is heavily tied to community uplift. I plan to use my experiences to build accessible technology for those who need it most. For example, I recently designed an autonomous pothole-repair robot that reduced estimated repair costs by nearly 80%, aiming to alleviate infrastructure burdens in underfunded municipalities. I am actively working toward my goals by paying my knowledge forward. For three summers, I served as a Drone Technology Instructor for the Future Kings Program, equipping youth with the skills to pass their FAA Part 107 exams and break into STEM fields. Currently, I am building an affordable ESP32-based environmental sensing platform to monitor air quality in marginalized communities. The Lotus Scholarship will relieve my heavy financial burden, allowing me to fully focus on creating cost-effective engineering solutions that empower and protect communities like the one that raised me.

My interest in computer science did not start in a classroom. It started in a lab, staring at raw sensor data with no clear way to make sense of it. This past summer, working as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago on a federally funded magnetic sensing project, I found myself needing to process and visualize thousands of magnetic field measurements, and the existing tools for doing that were slow and disconnected. So I taught myself to build something better, writing Python scripts that eventually grew into MagPlotter, an open-source tool for processing and visualizing magnetic field scan data. That experience showed me that code was not just a supporting skill for my physics work, it was becoming a discipline I genuinely loved in its own right, which is why I am pursuing a minor in mathematics and computer science alongside my primary degree in Applied Physics at Morehouse College. My goal after graduation is to work at the intersection of physics, engineering, and software, building sensing and data systems that solve real technical problems rather than staying purely theoretical. I want to keep doing the kind of work I did this summer, where I optimized a Halbach ring magnet design through a multi-iteration pipeline combining differential evolution and gradient-based refinement, and caught a unit conversion error that had been quietly distorting weeks of results before anyone noticed. Code was the tool that made that precision possible, and I want a career where I keep using it that way, not as an abstract skill, but as the thing that turns confusing raw data into something people can actually act on. I believe I am a strong candidate for this scholarship because computer science, for me, has never been separate from solving problems that matter. I built MagPlotter because a real team needed it, not as a classroom exercise, and I open-sourced it because I believe useful tools should not stay locked to one project. I have also spent time mentoring other students through the National Society of Black Engineers, helping first-year engineering students navigate a demanding technical path the way I wish someone had helped me navigate mine. Like Chris Jackson, I want technology to be something I use in service of other people, not just my own advancement, and this scholarship would let me keep building that kind of career without financial pressure pulling my focus away from the work itself.

This past summer, I built MagPlotter, an open-source Python tool for processing and visualizing magnetic field scan data, while working as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago on a federally funded magnetic sensing project. It started as something small and practical. Our team was collecting thousands of magnetic field measurements from a scanning system, and the existing workflow for making sense of that data was slow and disconnected, spreadsheets, manual plotting, no consistent way to visualize what the numbers were actually telling us. I decided to build something better, mostly because I was tired of squinting at raw numbers when I knew there was a clearer picture hiding inside them. I started small, writing scripts to parse the scan output and generate basic plots. But the more I used it, the more I found myself adding to it, better visualization options, cleaner data handling, features that made it easier for other people on the team to use without needing to understand the underlying code. What began as a personal convenience tool eventually became something the rest of the team relied on, and I made the decision to open-source it, because I liked the idea that a tool built to solve one specific frustration for me could end up saving someone else, somewhere, the same headache. That project mattered to me for more than practical reasons. Around the same time, I was running a multi-iteration Halbach ring magnet optimization pipeline, combining differential evolution and gradient-based refinement to push a magnet design toward its best possible field gradient. I caught a unit conversion error, Tesla versus millitesla, that had quietly been distorting weeks of earlier results, and fixing it meant going back through everything with a level of care I had not fully appreciated the importance of before. MagPlotter became the tool that let me actually see those results clearly enough to catch mistakes like that in the first place. Writing software, in that context, was not separate from the physics. It was the thing that made the physics visible. Technology inspires me because of that exact relationship, the way a well-built tool can turn confusion into clarity almost instantly. There is a specific kind of satisfaction in watching a chart finally render correctly after hours of debugging a parsing error, or in realizing that a script you wrote at two in the morning just saved a teammate an entire afternoon of manual work. I am not drawn to technology because I want to build flashy things. I am drawn to it because it lets me solve problems precisely, and because solving them well tends to ripple outward to help people beyond just me. That is part of why I care about open-sourcing my own work and about mentoring other students, particularly through the National Society of Black Engineers, where I have helped organize panels connecting first-year engineering students with upperclassmen willing to be honest about how hard this path is. I want the tools I build and the knowledge I have to be genuinely useful to more people than just myself, the same way MagPlotter ended up mattering to a whole team rather than just my own workflow. I am studying Applied Physics through Morehouse College's Dual Degree Engineering Program, with plans to move into electrical engineering and eventually pursue a PhD, but the through line connecting all of that to computer science is the same one that drove MagPlotter into existence: I care about building tools that make hard, invisible problems visible, and I want to keep doing that for the rest of my career.

The moment that best captures this for me happened this past summer, when I walked into my internship at a small technology company in Chicago and found a magnetometer scanning system sitting completely dead. It had been broken for months before I got there. Multiple people had already looked at it and moved on, treating it as a lost cause that the team would just have to work around. I could not leave it alone. I spent the first few days of my internship just poking at it, tracing through the old code, checking sensor connections, trying to understand why a system that used to work had simply stopped. Eventually I found the problem wasn't one big failure, it was a tangle of smaller issues layered on top of each other, an outdated positioning method that had drifted out of calibration, wiring that had degraded, and code that had been patched so many times nobody fully trusted it anymore. Rather than just patch it again, I rewrote the core of the scanning logic. The original system used an accelerometer-based method to figure out when the scanner had reached a stable position, which was finicky and prone to noise. I replaced it with a field-convergence stability detection approach instead, essentially having the system judge stability from the actual signal it was trying to measure rather than a separate, less reliable proxy sensor. That change alone let me simplify the entire data output from nine columns down to six, cutting out a layer of complexity nobody had questioned because it had just always been there. When I finally got the system running again, I did not just tell people it worked. I ran it live in front of the team, watching thousands of synchronized magnetic field measurements start streaming in cleanly for the first time in months. One of the senior engineers, who had written off the system as something we would just have to live without, actually stopped what he was doing to come watch it run. He asked how I had approached the fix, and when I explained the field-convergence idea, he told me he would not have thought to rebuild the stability detection from scratch instead of just tuning the existing method. That reaction meant more to me than almost anything else that summer. I had not just fixed a piece of equipment. I had changed how someone more experienced than me was thinking about the problem. What I loved most about that whole process was the part nobody assigns you, the decision to keep pulling a thread that everyone else had already dropped. Nobody told me to rebuild the stability detection method. I did it because I got curious about why the old approach kept failing, and curiosity led somewhere better than the original design. By the end of the summer, that same optimization mindset let me push a magnet gradient design to nearly seventeen times the project's original target, and I ended up presenting both results directly to the company's CEO and chief scientist. That is the version of the hacker spirit I recognize in myself. It is less about flashy invention and more about refusing to accept that something broken has to stay broken just because everyone else has moved on. I do not build things to impress people. I build things because leaving a real problem unsolved has always bothered me more than the extra hours it takes to actually fix it, and I love the moment when something dead comes back to life in front of someone who had already given up on it.

My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am currently a student at Morehouse College pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, with a focus on Mechanical Engineering. My educational goal is to complete this dual degree structure, finishing three years at Morehouse before transferring to complete my final two years in electrical engineering at a partner institution such as Georgia Tech or Columbia. From there, I intend to pursue a PhD in engineering or applied mathematics, with a long-term career focused on developing sensing and signal technologies that solve real problems for communities that are often overlooked by the industries building that technology. This past summer gave me a preview of exactly the kind of work I want to build a career around. I served as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago, contributing to a federally funded research project on advanced magnetic sensing technology. I inherited a sensor system that had been broken for months, diagnosed the problem, and brought it back online. I improved the equipment's performance significantly, developed my own software tool for processing and visualizing the data we collected, and caught a critical measurement error that had quietly been distorting weeks of results before anyone else noticed. By the end of the summer, I was presenting my results directly to the company's leadership. That experience confirmed for me that I do not just want to study engineering academically. I want to keep building things that work and that matter. My professional goal is to use that technical foundation in service of something larger than personal achievement. I want to work at the intersection of advanced sensing technology and public good, whether that means environmental monitoring systems that serve under-resourced communities, infrastructure improvements, or mentoring the next generation of Black engineers so the field looks less like an exception for people who look like me and more like an expectation. Representation in STEM does not just mean occupying a seat. It means being remembered as capable of building the future once you are there, and I intend to spend my career proving that. Civic and public service have been part of my life long before I ever set foot on Morehouse's campus. In 2024, I earned my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction and received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Award. For my Eagle Scout Leadership Project in Washington, D.C., I planned and led an effort that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits for people facing harsh winter conditions. That project taught me early that meaningful impact rarely comes from a single dramatic gesture. It comes from months of unglamorous organizing work that eventually turns into something real for people who need it. That same instinct carried into my work teaching drone technology to high school students preparing for their FAA certification exams, a role I held for three consecutive summers. Many of these students arrived with little confidence in their ability to succeed in a technical field, and part of my responsibility was convincing them they were capable of mastering material that initially felt out of reach. Watching 90 percent of my students pass their certification exam on the first try meant more to me than any individual accomplishment, because each success represented a student who now believed something new about their own potential. At Morehouse, I have continued this work through the National Society of Black Engineers, where I created graphics and social content that helped grow our chapter's visibility and organized a panel connecting first-year engineering students with upperclassmen who could speak honestly about the difficulty of the program, academically and emotionally. I remember what it felt like walking into engineering spaces uncertain whether I belonged there, and I wanted to make that transition easier for students coming in behind me. I will be serving as the chapter's incoming Telecommunications Chairperson this coming year. I believe civic service and professional ambition are not separate tracks, they are the same track. Every technical skill I build is a tool I intend to put toward lifting other people up, not just advancing my own career. Whether that means mentoring a nervous freshman, teaching a kid to safely fly a drone, or building sensing technology that actually serves the communities it is deployed in, I want my work to reflect the same principle that shaped my Eagle Scout project years ago: real impact comes from showing up consistently and doing the work that others walk past. That is the standard I hold myself to now, and it is the standard I intend to carry through the rest of my education and into my career.

The obstacle that has most tested my pursuit of higher education has been financial. Morehouse College is a private HBCU, and tuition runs close to 30,000 dollars a semester. I do not come from a family that can absorb that cost, and by the time I arrived on campus as a freshman, I understood that affording this education was going to be as difficult as earning it academically. There were moments during my first year when I genuinely wondered whether I would be able to stay enrolled, watching the gap between what my financial aid covered and what I actually owed and not seeing an obvious way to close it. The person who helped me push through that obstacle was my mother. After my parents divorced when I was thirteen, she took on the responsibility of raising my brother and me largely on her own, and she did it while sacrificing constantly, financially and otherwise, so we could reach opportunities she never had access to herself. When I started at Morehouse, she did not have the means to simply cover the difference in tuition, but what she gave me was something just as important. She helped me think through every possible resource, encouraged me to apply for scholarship after scholarship even when it felt exhausting, and reminded me that asking for help was not a failure, it was strategy. She modeled that same persistence in her own life for years, and watching her refuse to give up on providing for us made it much harder for me to consider giving up on this degree simply because the path was financially difficult. That support pushed me to be resourceful in ways I had not expected. I took on a work-study position to cover food and daily necessities, even though it does not meaningfully offset tuition. I sought out research and internship opportunities that could strengthen my resume and open doors to funding down the line, including a summer position as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company, where I contributed to a federally funded research project and gained the kind of hands-on experience that makes future opportunities more accessible. I have applied for scholarship after scholarship, some successful and many not, because my mother taught me that the difference between people who make it through financial hardship and people who do not is often just a refusal to stop trying. This obstacle is not fully resolved. Financial pressure is still something I manage every semester, and every scholarship I receive directly reduces how much debt I graduate with or how many hours I have to work instead of focusing on my studies. But I no longer experience that pressure as something that might derail me. I experience it as something I know how to work through, because my mother showed me what it looks like to keep showing up for a goal even when the resources to reach it are not handed to you. I plan to carry that same persistence through the rest of my education and eventually into a PhD, and I hope to be able to give back to my own community the same way she gave to mine, by making sure the next person facing this obstacle does not have to face it entirely alone.

I became interested in engineering the moment I realized physics was not just a subject to memorize, it was a language for explaining why the world behaves the way it does. Growing up, I gravitated toward building things, taking them apart, and figuring out how to make them work better. That curiosity eventually became something more serious once I understood how STEM fields, particularly engineering, remain deeply underrepresented by people who look like me. I did not want to just study the field. I wanted to become proof that Black students belong at its center, not its margins. That interest became concrete this past summer, when I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago, contributing to a federally funded research project on advanced sensing technology. I inherited a system that had stopped working, diagnosed the problem, and brought it back online. I significantly improved the equipment's performance, built a protective case for transporting sensitive hardware, and developed my own software tool to process and visualize data. I also caught a critical measurement error that had quietly distorted weeks of results before anyone else noticed. That experience confirmed exactly why I am drawn to this field. Engineering rewards patience and precision over ego, and I find real satisfaction in problems that only yield to careful, sustained attention. The impact I hope to make goes beyond any single project. I want to build technology that serves communities that are often overlooked, whether through environmental monitoring, infrastructure, or sensing systems that solve real problems rather than abstract ones. Just as important, I want to make sure the door I am walking through stays open behind me. Representation in STEM is not just about who occupies a seat, it is about who gets remembered as capable of building the future once they arrive. I intend to be both, someone who builds real things and someone who actively brings other students along with me. Adversity has shaped this path more than any single achievement has. During my sophomore year of high school, I suffered a serious football injury, a concussion alongside a fractured shoulder, that pulled me out of school for a month. I struggled to read a single paragraph without losing the thread of it, and I was cut off from the team that had felt like a second family. That period taught me that persistence matters more than raw talent, a lesson I have carried directly into engineering, a field where nothing works on the first attempt. I have also had to build my education around real financial pressure. As the first person in my family to attend a private HBCU, I do not have the safety net some of my peers do, and every dollar I do not have to spend worrying about tuition is a dollar of focus I can redirect toward the work itself. Despite that, I have stayed deeply engaged, earning my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, leading a service project that distributed more than 1,100 survival kits, and mentoring incoming engineering students through the National Society of Black Engineers. STEM has given me a way to turn both my curiosity and my adversity into something productive. I plan to keep building, keep mentoring, and keep proving that where someone starts does not determine what they are capable of finishing.

My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am a rising sophomore at Morehouse College studying Applied Physics through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, focusing on Mechanical Engineering. I am the first in my family to attend an HBCU, and that shapes how seriously I take every opportunity in front of me. My passion for STEM was not handed to me easily. During my sophomore year of high school, I suffered a serious football injury, a concussion and a fractured shoulder, that pulled me out of school for a month. I struggled to read a paragraph without losing the thread of it. That period taught me persistence matters more than natural talent, a mindset I carried directly into engineering, where nothing works on the first try. That mindset was tested again this past summer, when I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago, contributing to a federally funded research project on advanced sensing technology. I inherited a broken system, diagnosed the problem, and brought it back online. I improved the equipment's performance significantly, built a protective case for transporting sensitive hardware, and developed my own software tool to process and visualize data. I also caught a critical measurement error that had quietly distorted weeks of results before anyone else noticed. Leadership and service have run alongside my technical growth. In 2024, I earned my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction and received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Award, planning a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits. For three summers, I taught drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, watching 90 percent pass on their first attempt, many of whom doubted whether a technical field was meant for them. At Morehouse, I continued that commitment through the National Society of Black Engineers, creating content that grew our chapter's visibility and organizing a panel connecting incoming engineering students with upperclassmen who could guide them honestly through a demanding first year. Morehouse's Dual Degree Engineering Program lets me build a strong foundation in applied physics before transitioning into electrical engineering at a partner institution, giving me both theoretical depth and technical range. I want to be equipped to build real solutions, the same way I did in high school designing an autonomous pothole detection and repair system that cut estimated repair costs by more than 75 percent, and the same way I continue building today in Morehouse's Makerspace on an environmental sensing platform. My long term goal is to earn a PhD in engineering or applied mathematics and build technology that serves people who are too often overlooked, while making sure the door I walked through stays open behind me. Being Black in STEM has taught me that representation means being remembered as capable of building the future, not just being present for it. I intend to be both, someone who builds real things and someone who makes other students who look like me believe they can build them too.

My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am a rising sophomore at Morehouse College, where I am pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, with a focus on the Mechanical Engineering track. I am also the first person in my family to attend a Historically Black College and University, a fact I carry with real pride into every classroom, lab, and community project I take on. I am applying for the Christian Fitness Association General Scholarship because financial need is the single greatest obstacle standing between me and finishing what I have already started, and this support would allow me to keep building without that constant pressure pulling at my focus. My academic journey has been defined by a relentless drive to challenge myself and push through obstacles rather than around them. By the time I began my first semester as a First Time Freshman at Morehouse in the fall of 2025, I had already earned transfer credit from Spelman College for Pre-Calculus and College Board AP credit for National Government. I am honored to be part of the Howard Thurman Honors Program, which holds me to a higher standard both in and out of the classroom. In my first semester, I navigated a demanding course load and earned a 3.07 GPA. I also hit a real setback, having to withdraw from Calculus I during that first term. Rather than let that shake my confidence, I enrolled in the course again the following semester and pushed through it alongside several other difficult classes, finishing stronger than I started. Beyond the classroom, that same drive shows up most clearly in my hands-on work and professional experience. During the summer of 2026, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at a small technology company in Chicago, contributing to a federally funded research project focused on advanced sensing technology. I inherited a system that had stopped working, figured out what was wrong, and got it running again. I significantly improved the accuracy and performance of the equipment, built a protective case to safely transport sensitive hardware, and developed my own software tool to help process and visualize the data we collected. I also caught a critical measurement error that had quietly been throwing off weeks of results before anyone noticed, which reflects the kind of careful, patient attention I try to bring to everything I do. Alongside the technical work, I helped build out a list of research contacts across dozens of institutions to support the company's future partnerships. My commitment to impact extends well beyond any lab and into my community. In 2024, I achieved the rank of Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction and received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Award. For my Eagle Scout Leadership Project in Washington, D.C., I planned and led a service initiative that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits for people facing harsh winter conditions. For three summers, I also served as a Drone Technology Instructor for the Future Kings Program, teaching young students how to safely operate drones and helping them prepare for a federal certification exam, with 90 percent of my students passing on their first attempt. At Morehouse, I have continued that same tradition of leadership. As a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, I created content that helped grow our chapter's visibility and organized a panel connecting new engineering students with upperclassmen who could guide them through a difficult and often overwhelming first year. Looking ahead, I will be serving as the incoming Telecommunications Chairperson for the chapter this coming year. My ultimate goal is to use my education to solve real problems that affect real people, whether through community infrastructure, environmental monitoring, or technology that serves communities that are often overlooked. In high school, I designed a project aimed at reducing the cost of repairing potholes in my community by more than 75 percent. Today, I am continuing that same kind of hands-on problem solving at Morehouse's Makerspace. None of this work has been easy to afford. College costs are a real and constant burden on my family, and I do not come from a family that can absorb the cost of tuition, housing, and everyday expenses without serious strain. Every scholarship I receive directly reduces how much I have to borrow or how many hours I have to spend working instead of focusing on my studies and the projects that matter most to me. This scholarship would not just help me stay enrolled. It would give me the breathing room to keep pursuing the kind of hands-on, high-impact work I have already shown I am capable of, without financial stress constantly pulling my attention away from it. By selecting me for the Christian Fitness Association General Scholarship, you are investing in a dedicated student, a proven community leader, and someone who has already shown what he can do with the opportunities he has been given, and who is simply asking for the chance to keep going. Thank you for your consideration.

The books that have shaped me most are not the ones typically associated with comfort reading, and I think that says something true about how I use books in the first place. I read to understand systems, power, and human nature under pressure, and that habit has directly shaped both how I think and what I want to do with my life. George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm taught me to pay close attention to how systems quietly convince people that unfair things are normal. Reading them did not make me paranoid, it made me more alert, more aware of how easily language and structure can reshape what a society accepts without question. Franz Kafka's The Trial pushed that same idea further, showing how disorienting it feels to be judged by rules you cannot fully see or understand. These books did not give me comfort. They gave me a sharper eye for the world I actually live in, which matters more to me than comfort does. Mario Puzo's The Sicilian, the Godfather spinoff following Salvatore Giuliano, taught me something different but related. It is a book about loyalty, ambition, and the cost of trying to build power outside a system that was never designed to let you in. Giuliano's story is tragic, but it stuck with me because it captures something real about what happens when talent and ambition collide with structures that were never built with you in mind. I think about that book often when I consider my own path in engineering, a field where I am working to build something meaningful inside systems that have not always made room for people who look like me. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has probably influenced me the most directly, given the work I actually do. It is often read as a simple cautionary tale about science overreaching, but what struck me more was Victor Frankenstein's failure of responsibility once he created something powerful. He built something extraordinary and then abandoned it, refusing to take ownership of the consequences. As someone studying physics and engineering, currently completing a quantum physics internship, that lesson feels directly relevant to my future. Technology does not stay neutral once it exists in the world. The people who build it owe it real ongoing responsibility, not just credit for the initial invention. Taken together, these books have shaped my goals more than any single motivational read could have. They taught me to be suspicious of comfortable narratives, to pay attention to power and who it serves, and to take responsibility seriously once I have built something that works. That mindset shows up in how I approach mentorship, making sure the students I teach or guide through the National Society of Black Engineers understand not just how to succeed technically, but how to think critically about the systems they are entering. It also shows up in how I approach my own engineering work, where I try to stay accountable for what I build rather than treating a finished project as the end of my responsibility. Books did not just entertain me growing up. They trained me to read the world more carefully, to notice what systems ask of people and what they take from them, and to think seriously about what it means to build something and then stay responsible for it. That is the lens I plan to carry into engineering, into mentorship, and into whatever I end up building next.

My goal is to earn a PhD in engineering or applied mathematics and build a career developing sensing and signal technologies that push scientific instruments past their current limits. I have a concrete academic and financial plan for getting there, built in stages. The first stage is finishing my degree at Morehouse College through the school's 3-2 Dual Degree Engineering Program, where I study Applied Physics. This lets me complete three years at Morehouse before transferring to finish my final two years in electrical engineering at a partner school such as Georgia Tech or Columbia, graduating with both a physics degree from Morehouse and an engineering degree from the partner school. I chose this path because it builds the strongest technical foundation before I specialize, and it leaves me with two credentials instead of one, which matters for graduate admissions and for competitiveness if I need to work between degrees. The financial reality of this stage is significant. Tuition at Morehouse runs approximately 30,000 dollars per semester, roughly 60,000 dollars per year. I have no family financial contributions to draw on. I hold a work-study job that covers food and basic necessities, but it does not meaningfully offset tuition. Some outside scholarships help with books and materials, but most of my education is currently financed through student loans. Every scholarship dollar I win directly reduces the loan balance I graduate with, which matters given that I plan to extend my education through a PhD rather than entering the workforce right after my bachelor's degree. The second stage is graduate school, and I already have research experience to build on. This past summer, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, optimizing a Halbach array magnet design to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance and presenting results to company leadership. I plan to keep seeking research experiences like this, since strong research letters and demonstrated ability to contribute to funded projects are what PhD programs weigh most heavily. My target timeline is applying to doctoral programs during my final undergraduate year, aiming for funded programs where a research or teaching assistantship covers tuition and provides a stipend, the standard funding model for STEM doctoral study. That structure matters practically, since it is the point where I stop accumulating debt and start being paid for the work I want to do. Alongside the academic plan, I am building the non-financial resources this path requires. I stay involved in the National Society of Black Engineers, both for mentorship and because relationships with faculty matter when securing recommendation letters and identifying the right graduate programs. I am also building technical skills outside the classroom, in programming, optimization, and hardware, that make me a stronger research candidate regardless of which lab I end up in. This plan requires consistency more than luck, but it also depends on the debt I accumulate now not becoming so large that it limits my choices later, particularly whether I can take a lower-paying but higher-impact research position instead of chasing salary to manage loan payments. Every stage depends on the one before it. Finishing strong at Morehouse funds a competitive transfer, a competitive transfer builds toward research experience, and research experience is what makes a funded PhD possible. Support like this scholarship reduces how much debt I carry into the next stage, and how much freedom I have on the other side of it.

The song I keep coming back to when I train is "brutal," specifically the moment where Olivia Rodrigo sings about feeling like she is not living up to some impossible standard everyone expects her to hit. That pressure is something I know intimately. I grew up in a family where anything less than excellence was treated as unacceptable, and that expectation has pushed me toward real accomplishments, but it also built a kind of anxiety that never fully turns off. When I am in the gym at six in the morning before physics coursework, that song captures exactly the tension I am working through physically, the sense of trying to outrun a standard that feels impossibly high while still believing I can eventually meet it. What I connect with most in her music is not the polished, produced version of confidence you hear in a lot of pop songs. It is the honesty about doubt sitting right next to ambition. I have spent a lot of my life being the person other people expect to have it together, the good student, the reliable one, the one pursuing a PhD in physics without apparent effort. Rodrigo's music is one of the few places I hear that same exhaustion named directly instead of hidden behind a performance of confidence, and there is something genuinely useful about training to music that admits pressure is heavy instead of pretending it isn't. "get him back!" works differently for me in the gym. It has real aggression in it, a kind of controlled anger that translates almost perfectly into how I approach heavy lifts or a hard set I do not want to finish. There is a version of frustration in that song that is not self-pitying, it is propulsive, and I have found that the same emotional register that powers a breakup anthem works just as well powering a final rep when your body wants to quit. I do not think that is an accident. Both are about refusing to let something get the better of you. There is also something in her music about the gap between who you are expected to be and who you actually are underneath that, which resonates with my own experience navigating comparisons to my older brother, an electrical engineer finishing his master's at Johns Hopkins, and trying to build my own version of success rather than a copy of his. Rodrigo's songs never resolve that tension neatly. They just sit inside it honestly, which is oddly more motivating to me than a song that pretends everything is fine. Working out to her music has become less about hype in the conventional sense and more about using that same honest tension, ambition sitting right next to doubt, anger sitting right next to exhaustion, as fuel instead of something to hide. Her songs do not pretend the pressure isn't real. They just refuse to let it win, and that is exactly the mindset I try to carry into every set, every mile, and every hard problem I am working through outside the gym as well.

If I designed a new Love Island challenge, I would build it around something I actually grew up loving, basketball, and use it to shake up the villa in a way that is more about fun and chaos than deep emotional testing. I call it Full Court Press. The setup is simple. Producers build a half court right on the villa lawn, complete with a hoop, a scoreboard, and enough space for the whole cast to crowd around and heckle. Each couple is paired up for a two-on-two style tournament, but with a twist that makes it pure Love Island chaos instead of a normal pickup game. Round one is called Mixed Signals. Instead of playing with their own partner, each islander is randomly paired with someone else's partner for the first game. So you might end up playing alongside the person your own partner is currently getting to know on the side, which instantly turns a simple basketball game into a minefield of jealousy, competitiveness, and forced teamwork. The games are quick, first to eleven, win by two, but every basket scored gets a reaction shot from whoever's actual partner is sitting on the sideline watching them team up with someone else. Round two is Trash Talk Timeout. Between games, each couple gets sixty seconds to stand at half court and playfully roast the other couples' game, their outfits, their relationship drama, anything goes as long as it stays fun and not mean spirited. This is where the personality really comes out, since Love Island thrives on people who can be a little extra and a little petty in an entertaining way. Whoever gets the loudest reaction from the crowd earns their team bonus points added to their final score. Round three is the Buzzer Beater Showdown. The two top scoring couples from the earlier rounds face off in a winner take all shootout, but here is the twist, they have to shoot free throws while their partner stands directly under the hoop trying to distract them, whispering something sweet, cheesy, or ridiculous in their ear right as they shoot. It is basically a test of whether you can stay focused while the person you are into is doing everything they can to throw you off, which honestly feels like a pretty accurate metaphor for being on this show in general. The winning couple gets a private movie night in the Hideaway, plus bragging rights for the rest of the season, and everyone else has to do the dishes for a week. What I love about this challenge is that it does not try to manufacture some deep emotional reveal. It is just genuinely fun, competitive, a little messy, and gives the cast a reason to be loud, playful, and a bit ridiculous with each other, which is honestly half the reason people watch Love Island in the first place.

Math first felt real to me not in a classroom, but standing in front of a magnetometer scanning system at QuantCAD LLC this summer, watching a Halbach array magnet optimization pipeline climb toward a field gradient nearly seventeen times the project's original target. What I love about math is that moment, when an abstract equation stops being abstract and starts telling you something true about the physical world in front of you. I am studying Applied Physics at Morehouse College, and math has become the language I use to translate curiosity into something I can actually test. Working on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, I relied on differential evolution and gradient based optimization to push a magnet design toward its best performance, and I caught a unit conversion error that had quietly been distorting weeks of results before the math itself forced me to notice something was wrong. That is what I love most about math. It does not let you lie to yourself. A gut feeling can be wrong, but if the numbers do not add up, eventually you have to listen. I also love math because of how patient it demands you become. Calculus taught me to sit with a hard problem past the point where I wanted to give up, whether that was related rates in high school or an optimization script that refused to converge. There is a specific confidence that comes from surviving something that difficult. When I hit a wall now, in a physics course or a lab, I remind myself I have already proven I can out-stubborn a problem that once felt impossible. What keeps me coming back to math, though, is how quietly universal it is. A magnet gradient behaves the same way regardless of where the person studying it grew up. Math does not care about the things that too often decide who gets taken seriously in a room. It only cares whether the work is correct. That fairness is part of why I trust it completely. I plan to build a career around that trust, eventually pursuing a PhD in engineering or mathematics. Math has already taught me more than formulas. It taught me patience, honesty with myself, and the discipline to keep working a problem until the truth of it comes through.

Mental illness entered my life quietly, without a clear starting point I can point to and say that is where it began. My clearest window into it came during my sophomore year of high school, after a traumatic concussion pulled me out of school for a month and cut me off from my football team at the same time. I had always built my sense of self around performing well, academically and athletically, and suddenly I could not do either. I struggled to read a single paragraph without losing the thread of it, and I was isolated from the group of teammates who had felt like a second family. What I did not expect was how much that physical injury would tip into something that felt more like anxiety and depression than simple frustration. I remember lying awake wondering if I would ever fully come back, and that kind of quiet hopelessness was new to me and frightening in a way I did not have language for at the time. That period also made visible a pressure that had been shaping me long before the injury. In my family, anything less than excellence was treated as unacceptable, and while that expectation pushed me toward ambitious goals like eventually pursuing a PhD in physics, it also came at a real psychological cost. I have dealt with real self doubt, the kind that does not lift after a good grade or a strong week, the kind that quietly asks whether you are actually capable or just moving fast enough that nobody notices if you are not. I did not always have the vocabulary for that experience growing up, especially in a household where the expectation was to appear fine regardless of what was happening internally. Looking back, I think that unspoken rule made it harder to recognize what I was dealing with as something real rather than something to just push through silently. As a student now at Morehouse College, I understand more clearly how mental illness does not always announce itself. Balancing physics coursework, a part time job, and involvement in organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers has taught me how easily academic and personal pressure compound into something heavier than either one alone, and how much energy it can take to appear fine when you are not. I try to be honest with myself about that now instead of defaulting to the silence I grew up around. That honesty has shaped how I try to show up for other people. Through NSBE, I helped organize a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could speak openly about the emotional difficulty of the program, not just the technical material, because I know how isolating it feels to struggle quietly in a demanding environment. I also tried to bring that same openness into the drone technology courses I taught for three summers, acknowledging when material felt overwhelming instead of assuming students should push through in silence the way I once did. Mental illness has affected me by teaching me, sometimes painfully, that struggling does not always look dramatic from the outside, and that the people around you can be completely unaware of what you are carrying. I do not want that invisibility to be normal for the people I mentor or the people close to me. I would rather name the pressure honestly, because I believe that honesty is often the first real step toward someone getting the help they need before things get worse.

Mental health became something I had to understand firsthand during my sophomore year of high school, when a traumatic concussion pulled me out of school for a month and cut me off from my football team at the same time. I had always built my identity around performing well, academically and athletically, and suddenly I could not do either. I struggled to read a single paragraph without losing the thread of it, and I was isolated from the group of teammates who had felt like a second family. Nobody prepared me for how lonely that recovery would be, even while surrounded by people every day at school. That period taught me that mental health struggles do not always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes they look like quietly wondering if you will ever feel like yourself again. That experience also opened my eyes to a pressure I had been carrying long before the injury. In my family, anything less than excellence was treated as unacceptable, and while that expectation pushed me toward ambitious goals like pursuing a PhD in physics, it also came with a real cost. I have dealt with genuine self doubt, the kind that does not go away after a good grade or a successful week, the kind that quietly asks whether you are actually capable or just working hard enough that nobody notices if you are not. I did not always have language for that feeling growing up, especially in a household where the expectation was to appear fine no matter what was happening internally. As a student now at Morehouse College, I know firsthand how easily academic and personal pressure can compound into something heavier than either one alone. Balancing physics coursework, a part time job, and involvement in organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers has taught me that ambition without attention to mental well being eventually becomes unsustainable. I try to be honest with myself and with the people around me about that reality rather than pretending it does not exist, because I know how much silence can cost a person when it goes on long enough. I have tried to turn that honesty into something useful for other people. Through NSBE, I helped organize a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could speak openly about the academic and emotional difficulty of the program, not just the technical material. Engineering programs can be isolating, and I wanted incoming students to hear directly that struggling does not mean they do not belong. I also tried to bring that same openness into the drone technology courses I taught for three summers, making a point of acknowledging when material felt overwhelming rather than assuming students should push through silently. Mental health matters to me because I have lived through periods where my own well being was invisible even to people close to me, and I do not want that experience to be normal for the students I mentor or the people around me. I want to be someone who names pressure honestly instead of pretending it away, because I think that honesty is often the first thing that allows someone to ask for help before things get worse. Whether that is a teammate recovering from an injury, a first year engineering student doubting whether they belong, or a younger student learning a difficult new skill, I try to make space for people to be honest about struggling rather than expecting them to perform wellness the way I once felt pressured to.

My name is Evan Kinsel, and I am currently a student at Morehouse College studying Applied Physics with a concentration in Mechanical Engineering. Before I was ever a student, though, I was a kid spending summers with my grandmother, and those summers shaped me in ways I am still discovering. My grandmother raised me during the summers, and life at her house ran on a different set of rules than the rest of the year. She had me doing yard work and manual labor from early in the morning, not as punishment but as a way of life. There was no negotiating with her about it. If something needed to be done, it got done, and I was expected to be part of getting it done. My grandmother had an Army background, and it showed in everything about how she ran her household. She was tough, disciplined, and did not tolerate excuses, but underneath that toughness she was completely fair. She never asked more of me than she was willing to give herself. I spent a lot of time with her on Fort Belvoir, surrounded by the same structure and discipline that had shaped her own life for years. That military background was the lens through which she taught me almost everything. She talked to me about mortality plainly and without softening it, because her time in the Army had taught her that avoiding hard truths does not protect anyone. She taught me to take my health seriously, to treat my body like something worth maintaining rather than something to take for granted, because she had seen what happens when people do not. Those were not comfortable lessons for a kid to sit with, but they were honest ones, and I am grateful for that honesty now in a way I did not fully appreciate at the time. Being raised in part by my grandmother during those summers, and by my mother the rest of the year, especially after my parents divorced when I was thirteen, taught me that family does not always look like one steady household. Sometimes it looks like different people stepping in during different seasons of your life, each teaching you something the others could not. My grandmother taught me discipline, physical labor, and a clear-eyed relationship with mortality and health. My mother taught me sacrifice and steadiness. Both of those lessons live in me at the same time. I carried what my grandmother taught me directly into how I approach responsibility toward other people. As an Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, I planned and led a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC, work that demanded the same no excuses discipline she instilled in me during those summers. I have spent three summers teaching drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, and through the National Society of Black Engineers at Morehouse, I have helped organize mentorship panels connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who can guide them. That same discipline followed me into my work this past summer as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC, where I contributed to a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, inheriting a sensor system that had been broken for months and pushing a magnet optimization pipeline to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. My grandmother taught me that hard, unglamorous work done consistently is what actually changes outcomes, and I have carried that lesson into every difficult problem I have faced since.

My vision for the future is built around a simple belief, that education should be used to open doors for other people, not just walk through them yourself. I am currently a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC, working on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, where I inherited a sensor system that had been broken for months and have since pushed a magnet optimization pipeline to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. That work has shown me what I am capable of technically, but more importantly, it has clarified what I want my education to be for. I have no interest in spending a career solving difficult problems in isolation. I want to use that same technical ability to build pathways into engineering for people who have rarely been given a clear route in. The people who inspire that vision are the ones closest to me. My mother raised my brother and me largely on her own after my parents divorced when I was thirteen, sacrificing time, money, and her own comfort so that we could access opportunities she never had. My older brother went first, earning his degree in electrical engineering at the University of Virginia before beginning a master's program at Johns Hopkins, and watching him navigate that path made something abstract feel possible. Between the two of them, I learned that ambition means very little if it is not paired with responsibility toward other people. My mother gave without ever expecting anything in return, and my brother proved the road existed. I am studying applied physics at Morehouse College through the Dual Degree Engineering Program, with plans to move into electrical engineering and eventually pursue a doctorate, because I want to build my own version of what they modeled for me. The change I am determined to create centers on mentorship and access, because I believe those are the two things that most often decide whether a talented student stays in a technical field or quietly leaves it. Through the National Society of Black Engineers, I helped organize a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen willing to speak honestly about the difficulty of the path, not only the coursework but the isolation that comes with being one of the few people in the room who looks like you. I understand that isolation firsthand, and I do not want it to be the reason a capable student walks away from something they could have finished. For three summers, I also taught drone technology to high school students preparing for their FAA certification exams, and watching 90 percent of them pass on the first attempt taught me that confidence is often the missing variable rather than ability. I intend to use my education to keep building that access for as long as I have a career, whether that means mentoring younger engineers, teaching technical skills to students who do not yet believe those skills belong to them, or simply being visible in rooms where people like me have not historically been expected. My goal has never been individual achievement for its own sake. It is to demonstrate that where a person begins does not determine where they finish, and then to make that same proof available to whoever is coming up behind me.

Community has shaped nearly every major decision I have made, starting with the service project that earned me my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction. I planned and led an effort that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. That project required months of recruiting volunteers, sourcing supplies, and managing logistics that most people never saw, but the goal was never personal recognition. It was ensuring that people facing genuinely difficult winter conditions had something warm to rely on, and that experience taught me early that meaningful community work is usually built from unglamorous, repetitive effort rather than a single dramatic gesture. That same instinct carried into my work teaching drone technology to high school students preparing for their FAA certification exams, a role I held for three consecutive summers. Many of these students arrived with little confidence in their ability to succeed in a technical field, and part of my responsibility was convincing them they were capable of mastering material that initially felt out of reach. Watching 90 percent of my students pass their certification exam on the first try meant more to me than any individual accomplishment, because each success represented a student who now believed something new about their own potential. At Morehouse College, I have continued this work through my involvement with the National Society of Black Engineers. I helped organize a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could offer honest guidance on navigating a demanding and often isolating academic path. I remember what it felt like walking into engineering spaces uncertain whether I belonged there, and I wanted to make that transition easier for students coming in behind me. I also contributed graphics and social content for the organization that reached thousands of my peers, using skills I had built independently to support a broader mission of connection and visibility within our chapter. My commitment to community extends beyond organized programs into the relationships I try to maintain across the two places I now call home. I stay connected to my community in Virginia even while building a new one in Atlanta, because I believe showing up consistently matters more than showing up only when it is convenient. This past summer, working as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, I carried that same sense of responsibility into a technical setting, understanding that the opportunities I was given came from people who had invested in me first. I believe community is built less through occasional acts of generosity and more through consistent, unglamorous presence over time. Whether that has meant organizing volunteers for a service project, patiently teaching a discouraged student, or mentoring a first year classmate uncertain of their place in engineering, I try to approach service the same way I approach difficult technical problems: with patience, follow through, and a refusal to walk away once the initial excitement fades. I plan to carry this same ethic into my career, using my engineering skills not only to solve technical challenges but to continue building the kind of supportive community that has shaped who I am.

Mental health became personal for me during my sophomore year of high school, when a traumatic concussion pulled me out of school for a month and cut me off from my football team at the same time. I had always associated my identity with performing well, academically and athletically, and suddenly I could not do either. I struggled to read a single paragraph without losing the thread of it, and I was isolated from the group of teammates who had felt like a second family. Nobody prepared me for how lonely that recovery would be, even while surrounded by people every day at school. That period taught me that mental health struggles do not always look dramatic from the outside. Sometimes they look like quietly wondering if you will ever feel like yourself again. That experience also opened my eyes to a pressure I had been carrying long before the injury. In my family, anything less than excellence was treated as unacceptable, and while that expectation pushed me toward ambitious goals like pursuing a PhD in physics, it also came with a real cost. I have dealt with genuine self doubt, the kind that does not go away after a good grade or a successful week, the kind that quietly asks whether you are actually capable or just working hard enough that nobody notices if you are not. I did not always have language for that feeling growing up, especially in a household where the expectation was to appear fine no matter what was happening internally. As a student now at Morehouse College, mental health matters to me because I know firsthand how easily academic and personal pressure can compound into something heavier than either one alone. Balancing physics coursework, a part time job, and involvement in organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers has taught me that ambition without attention to mental well being eventually becomes unsustainable. I try to be honest with myself and with the people around me about that reality rather than pretending it does not exist. My advocacy has largely taken the form of mentorship work through NSBE, where I helped organize a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could speak openly about the academic and emotional difficulty of the program, not just the technical material. Engineering programs can be isolating, and I wanted incoming students to hear directly that struggling does not mean they do not belong. I also tried to bring that same openness into the drone technology courses I taught for three summers, making a point of acknowledging when material felt overwhelming rather than assuming students should push through silently. Mental health is important to me because I have lived through periods where my own well being was invisible even to people close to me, and I do not want that experience to be normal for the students I mentor. I want to be someone who names the pressure honestly instead of pretending it away, because I think that honesty is often the first thing that allows someone to ask for help. Whether that is a teammate recovering from an injury, a first year engineering student doubting whether they belong, or a younger student learning a difficult new skill, I try to make space for people to be honest about struggling rather than expecting them to perform wellness the way I once felt pressured to.

Selflessness, to me, has always meant showing up consistently for people even when there is no direct benefit to myself, and that belief has shaped several of the most meaningful commitments in my life. As an Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, I planned and led a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. That project required months of organizing, recruiting, and logistics work that most people never saw, but the goal was never recognition. It was ensuring that people facing genuinely difficult winter conditions had something warm to rely on, and that motivation carried me through every frustrating logistical setback along the way. That same commitment has continued through my work teaching drone technology to high school students preparing for their FAA certification exams, a role I held for three consecutive summers. Many of these students came into the program with little confidence in their ability to succeed in a technical field, and part of my job was not just teaching the material but convincing them they were capable of mastering it. Watching 90 percent of my students pass their certification exam on the first try meant far more to me than any individual accomplishment of my own, because I knew each of those passes represented a student who now believed something new about themselves. At Morehouse College, I have continued this pattern through my involvement with the National Society of Black Engineers. I organized a panel connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could offer guidance on navigating a difficult and often isolating academic path. I remember what it felt like walking into engineering spaces uncertain whether I belonged there, and I wanted to make that transition easier for the students coming in behind me. Selflessness, in this context, has meant using my own experience and position to open doors for people who have not yet found them. Perseverance for my beliefs has also played a significant role in how I approach service. During my sophomore year of high school, I suffered a serious injury while playing football that left me isolated from my team and struggling academically for weeks. That experience taught me firsthand what it feels like to need support and not know how to ask for it, and it has made me more attentive to the quieter forms of struggle that people around me may be carrying without saying so. I try to extend the kind of patience and consistency to others that I wished I had received more openly during that period of my own life. My family has modeled this same ethic for me throughout my life. My mother worked tirelessly to provide opportunities for my brother and me following my parents' divorce, often putting our needs ahead of her own without expecting anything in return. Watching her sacrifice consistently, without complaint, taught me that selflessness is rarely dramatic. It is usually just quiet, repeated effort on behalf of someone else's future. I plan to carry this same approach into my career in engineering, using my technical skills not only to solve difficult problems but to mentor the next generation of students who are uncertain whether fields like mine are open to them. Michael Rudometkin's legacy of putting relationships and service ahead of personal achievement reflects values I already try to live by, and this scholarship would allow me to continue building on that foundation without financial strain limiting how much time I can devote to the people around me.

Most college students have not had the opportunity to contribute to a NASA funded research project before their sophomore year, but I have. Last summer, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, and by the end of the summer I was presenting my results directly to the company's CEO and chief scientist. I inherited a sensor system that had been broken for months and brought it back online, then pushed a magnet optimization pipeline to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. I believe that willingness to take ownership of difficult, unglamorous technical problems and see them through to completion is one of the clearest advantages I bring to this competition. The technical work, however, is only part of what defines me. As an Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, I planned and led a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. That project required me to lead people who had no obligation to follow me, manage complex logistics under real pressure, and keep a shared goal moving forward even as circumstances shifted throughout the day. Many applicants can point to strong academic performance, but fewer can point to having organized something of that scale before finishing high school. Resilience has also shaped who I am in ways that go beyond academics. During my sophomore year of high school, I suffered a traumatic concussion while playing tight end, along with a fractured shoulder and a torn rotator cuff. I was out of school for a month, disconnected from my teammates, and struggling to read even a single paragraph without losing track of its meaning. I did not know at the time whether I would fully recover. I did, gradually, through the kind of repetitive and unremarkable effort that never makes it onto a highlight reel. That experience taught me that persistence, more than raw talent, is what carries a person through genuine adversity, and it continues to inform how I approach every difficult problem I encounter, whether in a physics course or in a lab. My family history is central to why this work matters to me. My mother raised my brother and me largely on her own following my parents' divorce when I was thirteen, sacrificing consistently, financially and otherwise, so that we could access opportunities she never had. My older brother graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in electrical engineering and is currently completing his master's degree at Johns Hopkins. Watching him complete that path first gave me a concrete sense of what was possible, and I am now building my own version of that trajectory through Morehouse College's Dual Degree Engineering Program, where I am studying applied physics with plans to transition into electrical engineering. What ultimately distinguishes me, I believe, is that I do not separate personal ambition from a sense of responsibility to others. I have spent three summers teaching drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, and I have helped organize mentorship panels through the National Society of Black Engineers that connect first year students with upperclassmen who can guide them. My goal is not simply to build an impressive individual record. It is to demonstrate that circumstance does not have to determine outcome, and to bring others along with me as I pursue that goal. I am not requesting this scholarship because I need to be convinced that I will succeed. I already know that I will. I am requesting it because the cost of a private HBCU education is substantial, and this support would allow me to direct my energy toward the work itself rather than toward the constant question of how to afford it.

During my sophomore year of high school, I sustained a traumatic concussion while playing tight end on my football team. What followed was not a quick recovery. I was out of class for a month, unable to keep up with schoolwork while my brain tried to heal. Along with the concussion, I had fractured my shoulder and torn the rotator cuff in my left arm. For weeks, I could not lift that arm at all. The physical damage was serious, but it was not the hardest part. The hardest part was everything the injury took away that had nothing to do with my body. Football had been more than a sport to me. It was a brotherhood, a place where I belonged completely and never had to explain myself. Being pulled out of that world for a month, unable to practice, unable to be in the locker room, unable to be part of the daily rhythm my teammates were still living, left me isolated in a way I did not expect. I was physically present in my own life but socially cut off from the group that had shaped so much of my identity. That kind of alienation is quiet. Nobody sees it happening from the outside. The cognitive effects were just as disorienting. I struggled with reading comprehension for weeks, rereading the same paragraph over and over without the words settling into meaning. For someone who had always been a strong student, that was frightening in a way I did not have language for at the time. I did not know if my mind would fully come back the way it had been before, and that uncertainty sat with me every day. There were points where I genuinely did not know if I would return to normal, academically, physically, or socially, and that hopelessness was harder to carry than the physical pain. What eventually pulled me through was refusing to accept that the injury got the final say in who I was becoming. I worked back into reading slowly, forcing myself through material even when it felt impossible, rebuilding the mental stamina I had lost one page at a time. I worked through physical therapy on my shoulder until I could lift my arm again. I found ways to stay connected to my team even while sidelined, because I understood that isolation was making the recovery harder, not just the injury itself. That experience changed how I approach difficulty in STEM today. When I hit a wall in a physics problem set, or when I spent weeks last summer diagnosing a broken sensor system during my internship at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II project, I recognized the same feeling I had during recovery, the sense that progress might not come, paired with the decision to keep working anyway. Resilience, to me, is not a single dramatic moment. It is choosing to show up to the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding, whether that is rebuilding a reading habit, a shoulder, or a sensor system that has not worked in months. I am still someone shaped by that injury. But I am also someone who proved to myself that a setback, even a serious one, does not get to decide the ceiling on what I am capable of.

In 2024, I planned and led a service project as part of earning my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction. The project coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. I did not just show up and help. I built the entire operation from the ground up, from recruiting volunteers to sourcing supplies to managing logistics on the day itself, and I was responsible for making sure it actually worked. Organizing something at that scale as a teenager taught me quickly that good intentions are not enough on their own. I had to figure out how many volunteers I actually needed and recruit them, which meant reaching out to my troop, my school, and my broader community and convincing people to give up a weekend for something they were not required to do. I had to plan the assembly process so that 81 people working at once did not turn into chaos, breaking the work into stations, assigning roles, and making sure materials were where they needed to be before anyone arrived. I had to think through distribution logistics for over 1,100 kits, since packing them was only half the project. Getting them into the hands of people who needed them across the city was its own challenge. What made the day itself work was not just planning, it was leadership under pressure. Things did not go perfectly. Supply counts had to be adjusted on the fly, volunteers needed direction in real time, and I had to make decisions quickly without a manual telling me what to do. That experience taught me that leadership through service is not about having authority over people. It is about earning trust by being the person who stays calm, adapts, and keeps a shared goal moving forward even when the plan changes. I believe leadership through service matters because service without organization often does not reach its full potential, and leadership without service can become disconnected from the people it is supposed to help. The two have to work together. When I think about the 1,100 people who received a kit that winter, I do not think about myself as the reason it happened. I think about the 81 volunteers who showed up because someone gave them a clear way to help, and I think about how much good gets left on the table when nobody steps up to do that organizing work. That project changed how I think about my own responsibility going forward. I have carried that same instinct into college, teaching drone technology to students for three summers and helping organize mentorship panels through the National Society of Black Engineers that connect first-year students with upperclassmen who can guide them. In every case, the pattern is the same. I am not just trying to help individually. I am trying to build something that lets other people help too, and that multiplies whatever good I could have done alone. Leadership through service is not about being the most visible person in the room. It is about being the person willing to do the unglamorous organizing work so that everyone else's effort has somewhere to go.

This past summer, I spent weeks running an optimization pipeline for a Halbach array magnet design, using tools like differential evolution and gradient-based refinement to push a magnetic field gradient toward the highest performance we could reach. What I was actually doing, underneath all the code and the physical hardware, was calculus. Every optimization step depended on understanding how a function changes as its inputs change, and how to find the point where that change flattens out into a maximum. That is the entire premise of a derivative, and I would not have been able to touch that project without it. Calculus matters in STEM because almost nothing in the physical world holds still. Physics is the study of how position, velocity, and force evolve over time, and none of that can be described without derivatives and integrals. When I was diagnosing a broken magnetometer sensing system this summer, I had to think about rates of field convergence and how measurements stabilized as our scanning system moved through space. That is calculus operating quietly underneath a very hands on engineering problem, the same way it operates underneath weather prediction, drug dosing, and structural engineering. Once you learn to see it, it is genuinely hard to find a STEM discipline where it is not doing real work. What calculus taught me that has mattered just as much as any formula is how to sit with a hard problem long enough to actually solve it. I remember catching a unit conversion error, Tesla versus millitesla, that had quietly been distorting weeks of optimization results before I found it. That kind of mistake does not get caught by intuition. It gets caught by understanding the mathematics well enough to notice when a result does not make physical sense. Calculus trains that instinct. It teaches you to trust the math over your assumptions, and to keep working a problem until the numbers and the physical reality actually line up. I also think calculus matters because it builds a kind of confidence that carries into everything else. It is a genuinely difficult subject, and getting through it teaches you that difficulty is not a signal to stop, it is just part of the process. When I hit a wall in a physics course or a coding problem now, I think back to working through related rates or optimization proofs, and I remind myself that I have already learned something objectively harder than whatever is in front of me. That confidence has mattered as much as the technical skill itself. Calculus is not just a requirement STEM students have to survive before getting to the interesting work. In my experience this summer, it was the interesting work. It was the actual language I used to describe how a physical system behaves and to figure out how to make that system better. I do not think I could have contributed meaningfully to a NASA funded sensing project without it, and I expect that will keep being true for the rest of my career.

For most of my life, it's been my mother carrying the weight that two parents usually share. My parents divorced when I was thirteen, and since then it's been her steering things for my brother and me. That transition reshaped a lot of things quietly in the background, but what shaped me more directly was watching my mother refuse to let it become an excuse for anything, for her or for us. She worked hard, and she sacrificed in ways that weren't always visible from the outside. Time she could have spent resting went into helping my brother and me with homework or driving us to whatever commitment needed showing up for. Money that could have gone toward her own comfort went toward opportunities for us instead. My older brother graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in electrical engineering and is now finishing a master's degree at Johns Hopkins. I'm studying physics at Morehouse College. Neither of us gets to that point without her doing the work of two parents by herself, without complaint, for years. Growing up with a single parent taught me that stability isn't something you're given. It's something someone builds for you at real cost, and once I understood that, I stopped taking my education for granted. I've tried to carry that same work ethic into everything I do. I earned my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, planning a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. I spent three summers teaching drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, watching 90 percent of them pass on the first try. Through the National Society of Black Engineers, I've helped organize mentorship panels connecting first-year students with upperclassmen who can show them the way forward, because I know what it feels like to need someone to do that for you. That instinct to give back isn't separate from my educational journey. It grew directly out of it. Watching my mother hold everything together taught me that community isn't just something you benefit from. It's something you're responsible for maintaining, especially once you've made it somewhere she couldn't take herself. This past summer, working as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, I felt that responsibility even in a technical setting. I wasn't just building something for myself. I was proving that the sacrifices behind me were worth something. Going forward, I want my career in engineering to be an extension of what my mother modeled for me. I want to show up consistently, do the hard invisible work, and make sure the people coming up behind me have an easier path than I did. Whether that means mentoring younger students, teaching technical skills to kids who don't yet believe those skills are within reach, or simply being present in spaces where people like me haven't always been expected, I want to spend my career giving back the same steadiness my mother gave me. She built the foundation. I intend to build on top of it, and make sure it holds for the next person too.

I'm Evan Kinsel, a student at Morehouse College studying Applied Physics with a concentration in Mechanical Engineering through the school's Dual Degree Engineering Program. Before I was an engineer, though, I was a football player. I played defensive end and tight end throughout high school in Gainesville, Virginia, and those years on the field taught me lessons that still shape how I approach everything else in my life: discipline, physical resilience, and the understanding that preparation during the quiet weeks is what actually determines what happens under the lights on game day. My family dynamic has always centered on high expectations paired with real sacrifice. My mother has worked tirelessly to give my older brother and me the opportunities she didn't have, often putting our success ahead of her own comfort without a second thought. My brother graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in electrical engineering and is now finishing a master's degree at Johns Hopkins. Watching him navigate that path first showed me what was possible, and gave me a standard to work toward in my own way, on my own campus, in my own field. My schooling has moved through several chapters that all point in the same direction. In high school, I earned my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction, planning and leading a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute more than 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. That same drive carried into football, where I learned how to compete physically while still showing up academically, and it carried into Morehouse, where I've continued balancing rigorous coursework with real hands-on work. This past summer, I worked as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project, diagnosing and repairing a broken sensor system and optimizing a magnet design to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. By the end of the summer, I was presenting that work to the company's CEO and chief scientist. Looking forward, my plan is to complete my physics and mechanical engineering foundation at Morehouse, then finish my electrical engineering degree at a school like Georgia Tech or Columbia through Morehouse's 3-2 Dual Degree program. From there, I intend to pursue a PhD in engineering or mathematics. I want a career built on solving hard technical problems, but I also want to stay connected to service and mentorship the way I have been through NSBE and through teaching drone technology to students earning their FAA certifications. Athletics taught me how to push through difficulty with a team counting on me. Engineering is teaching me how to do the same thing with a different kind of team, and a different kind of stakes. I'm still early in this journey, but the same principles that got me through two-a-days on the football field are the ones carrying me through physics problem sets and lab work today: show up, put in the work nobody sees, and never assume the outcome is guaranteed just because the effort was real.

Morehouse men have been shaping the world long before I arrived on campus. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat in these same classrooms. So did Maynard Jackson, who became Atlanta's first Black mayor, and Dr. David Satcher, who became the nation's first Black Surgeon General. I didn't choose Morehouse in spite of that history. I chose it because of it. I wanted to be shaped by a place where academic rigor and service to others were never treated as separate pursuits, but as the same pursuit, carried out generation after generation. That legacy has already reshaped how I understand my own ambitions. Coming into Morehouse, I thought excellence mostly meant individual achievement: good grades, a strong resume, a clear path forward. Morehouse taught me that excellence without service is incomplete. Through the National Society of Black Engineers, I have worked to build community rather than just credentials, creating graphics and content that reached thousands of my peers, and organizing a panel that connected first year engineering students with upperclassmen who could show them the way forward. I know what it feels like to walk into a room uncertain if you belong there. Morehouse taught me to turn around and hold that door open for the next person walking in behind me. That same instinct followed me into my work this past summer as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC, where I contributed to a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project. I inherited a sensor system that had been broken for months and brought it back online. I optimized a Halbach array magnet design to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance. By the end of the summer, I was presenting that work directly to the company's leadership. I do not think I would have had the confidence to stand in that room without Morehouse first teaching me what it looks like to do rigorous work and take ownership of it fully. I hope to carry this legacy forward long after I graduate. My long term goal is to earn a PhD in engineering or mathematics, but I do not see that degree as the destination. I see it as a tool for continuing the same work Morehouse has always done: opening doors that were once closed, and making sure they stay open behind me. Whether that means mentoring the next generation of Black engineers, teaching young people the technical skills that intimidate them before anyone tells them those skills are within reach, or simply doing excellent work in rooms where people like me have not always been expected, I want my career to be an extension of what this institution has always stood for. Morehouse did not just give me an education. It gave me a standard, and a lineage to live up to. I intend to spend my career proving that lineage was worth continuing, one door held open, one problem solved, one person believed in, at a time.

Excellence was never presented to me as an option. It was the baseline. Anything less wasn't failure exactly, it was just unacceptable, understood without needing to be said out loud at every family gathering, every report card, every conversation about what came next. That pressure did what it was supposed to do in some ways. It pushed me toward physics, toward wanting a PhD, toward believing I could build a life out of hard problems. But excellence has a cost, and for a long time I didn't understand what I was actually paying. Part of that cost has been my relationship with my father. We've been estranged since I was young, and that absence sat underneath everything else, a question I never fully got to ask or answer. Part of it has been watching my older brother Michael move through elite schools and a rigorous engineering degree with what looked, from where I stood, like ease. He became an RF engineer. He made it look natural. I spent years comparing myself to that image of him, wondering if I was actually capable or just running hard enough that no one noticed the gap between us. That comparison turned into real friction between us for a while. It's strange to resent someone you admire, but that's what happened. Morehouse has been its own kind of pressure. I'm proud to be there, and I meant everything I've said about what the school represents to me. But it's a private HBCU, and the funding isn't always there the way it is at larger institutions. So on top of physics coursework, I'm working part time, I'm involved in NSBE and other organizations, and I'm still trying to show up for my community back home in Virginia and the one I'm building here in Atlanta. Every one of those things matters to me. All of them together is a lot to carry at once. There's a specific exhaustion that comes from trying to excel academically, physically, financially, and mentally all at the same time, with no real room to be anything less than fine. There's also a cost to paying attention. I read a lot, and reading has made me more aware, not less, of how the world actually works. I know things could always be worse for me personally, and I try to hold onto that perspective. But awareness cuts both ways. Watching the economic and political landscape shift under my generation, knowing how often the systems around us aren't built to help people who look like me succeed, adds a weight that's hard to set down. It's not paranoia. It's just what happens when you're paying close enough attention to see the pattern. For a long time, all of this built up into real self doubt. Not the kind that goes away with a pep talk, but the kind that sits quietly under everything, asking whether I'm actually good enough or just afraid to stop moving. I didn't always know how to talk about that, especially in a family where the expectation was to perform wellness the same way we performed everything else. What's shifted things has been time, and distance, and watching my brother become someone I relate to instead of someone I measure myself against. Once we were both out of the house, him building his career and me finding my own footing at Morehouse, something eased between us. We're closer now than we've been in years. I think we both finally understood that neither of us was actually as effortless as we looked to the other. We were just two people trying to survive the same standard from different angles. One of my favorite poems is Invictus, written by the English poet William Ernest Henley in 1875 while he was recovering from a leg amputation. I've held onto it for a reason. It isn't a poem about escaping hardship. It's a poem about staying unbroken inside it, about claiming ownership over your own mind and your own fate even when the circumstances around you are brutal and unchosen. That's what I'm learning to do. I'm not interested in pretending the pressure wasn't real, or that the self doubt didn't happen, or that everything is resolved now. It isn't. But I know who I am underneath all of it. I have carried a family's expectations, an absent father, a brother's shadow, a private school's price tag, and a world that wasn't built with people like me in mind, and I am still standing, still pursuing excellence, still moving forward. Whatever else comes, I already know how this ends. I will be successful. Not because the path was easy, but because I refused to let it stop me. I am the one steering this. Nothing else gets that power.

Long before I understood what discipline meant, I was living it every Sunday. I grew up in church, serving as an usher, where I learned to show up on time, dress with intention, and carry myself with a certain seriousness even as a kid. That same standard followed me into academics and sports, where my mother instilled a pursuit of excellence in my brother and me that never left room for half effort. She did not just want us to succeed. She wanted us to understand that excellence was a habit, built one small decision at a time, whether that meant finishing homework before practice or showing up prepared for a game we might lose anyway. That foundation carried directly into Boy Scouts, where discipline turned into leadership. Earning my Eagle Scout with Palm Distinction meant more than checking off requirements. It meant planning and leading a service project that coordinated 81 volunteers to assemble and distribute over 1,100 cold weather survival kits across Washington, DC. I was seventeen, managing logistics and people twice my age, and half the time I had no idea if the plan would hold together. It did, because I stayed with it until it worked. That project taught me that leadership isn't about having all the answers. It's about showing up every day until the work is done. That same commitment followed me into my first real engineering job this past summer, as a Quantum Systems Intern at QuantCAD LLC on a NASA SBIR Phase II magnetic sensing project. I inherited a sensor system that had been broken for months and brought it back online. I pushed a magnet optimization pipeline to nearly seventeen times the project's target performance, catching and correcting my own errors along the way. Work, I learned, is not about being right the first time. It's about staying in the problem until you get it right. Volunteering has never felt separate from that same drive. For three summers, I taught drone technology to students preparing for their FAA certification exams, watching 90 percent of them pass on their first try. Through NSBE, I have organized panels connecting first year engineering students with upperclassmen who can show them the path forward, because someone did that for me once and I have not forgotten it. Outside of school and work, I am drawn to things that reward patience. I have gotten into fermentation and winemaking, which sounds like a strange hobby for an engineer, until you realize it is really just applied process optimization with better payoff. I also enjoy content creation, building graphics and social media work that has reached thousands of people. My greatest motivator is my mother. She is a hard worker who has sacrificed greatly for my success, my brother's success, and the success of the family around her, often giving up her own time and money without a second thought. My brother graduated from the University of Virginia in electrical engineering and is now finishing a master's degree at Johns Hopkins. I am studying physics at Morehouse College. Neither of us would be anywhere close to where we are without her. The pursuit of excellence she instilled in us from church pews to ball fields to classrooms is the same pursuit that carried me through Scouts, into engineering, and into every room I have walked into since. I am still early in my path, but I already know the shape of the person I want to become: someone who works hard, thinks creatively, and never forgets to reach back and pull someone else forward too.