Last year, Antarctica saw the first recorded temperature above 20 degrees Celsius, the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting at an alarming rate, more species of land animals are on the brink of extinction in the next 20 years than went extinct over the entire last hundred, and there are beaches that are completely covered by the 14 million tons of plastics that are dumped into the ocean each year. My goal is to study environmental and civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison in order to put that degree to work both directly addressing the current devastating environmental catastrophes and advocating for strong policies to address their root causes. I have always been passionate about the danger facing our planet, but also about our ability to protect it. When I was 7, I attended an Ocean Futures Society event, where we were shown the contents of birds’ stomachs that had died from eating plastic trash they found on beaches. The image of little green army men, toothbrush pieces, and plastic straws will never leave me. But I will also never forget later that same summer when I brought all my friends and their families to a local beach, and we cleaned up over 100 pounds of plastic and trash. Since then, I’ve believed that no matter the problem, there is a solution that I can achieve if I try hard enough. And I haven't ever stopped trying. I’ve organized dozens of beach cleanups, created an environmental club at my school, and founded a 501c3 organization, Greendale Robotics Inc., dedicated to providing STEM opportunities to kids in order to create a generation of scientists and engineers who will join me in protecting our future. As I move forward, my plan is to continue to learn about the dangers facing the Earth so I can apply engineering principles to develop solutions. The skills I learn at college will directly allow me to take an active part in the health of our planet. For example, an organization called Ocean Cleanup has developed automated robotic tools to clear plastics out of the ocean—as a member of multiple robotics teams, that’s the sort of solution I am excited to be able to implement in my future career! Technology is advancing at an incredible pace. By the time I have my degree, I know amazing things will be possible—they already are: the Ocean Cleanup robotic ocean cleaner is able to collect almost 500,000 pounds of ocean trash per trip! However, I also know improvements will always need to be made; the 500,000 pounds of collected trash is only a small fraction of the trash entering the oceans each year. There is no time to pause, solutions must keep improving. This scholarship will allow me to focus on learning the skills I need to continue my journey to protect this magnificent planet of ours. Getting my degree is the next step on a very long journey, but a journey worth the effort. The more I can focus on getting that degree without the distractions of financial challenges, the more success I envision, and the greater the change I can create. Becoming an environmental engineer is essential to my goal of making the world a better place. There are many threats facing our planet, but fortunately, there are many solutions, and I cannot wait for the opportunity to be a part of them!

My favorite things about Disney are the Imagineers. To me, the idea of making dreams come to life is truly inspiring, and in fact, it is what I hope to be when I finish my studies. As a child, I loved visiting Disney--who doesn't? I wanted to be a Disney Princess, of course. But as I got older, I thought about what made Disney so magical, and so special. I realized that Disney is magical, but it isn't magic. Disney magic is the product of the creativity, ingenuity, and innovation of the Imagineers. Combining visions with knowledge to create experiences that change little girls' lives became a dream that took hold of me. I started to read all I could about engineering, and especially about the engineers--Imagineers--that made Disney magic. I learned that no job is too small when I read about Maggie Elliott who went from carving styrofoam dolls for the wall niches in the Contemporary Resort to a Senior Vice President of WED (Disney's theme park planning, research, and development engineering laboratory.) I learned to take risks from Disney Landscape Artist Becky Bishop's story about picking the perfect tree for an attraction in Disneyland Paris. I learned about synergy and creativity and the business of Disney from reading about Lynne Rhodes who created the WED Work Process Matrix. Now, when I go to Disney, I still love the rides--the new Tron ride is amazing! And I still love the food--I'll never pass up a Dole Whip Float. But when I ride Remy's Ratatouille Adventure, I'm imagining how the engineers created a way for the passenger vehicles to follow different paths without visible tracks. I'm inspired by how the Rise of the Resistance ride transports passengers from a waiting area to a Transport Shuttle and then reconstructs a trip through what seems like an entire Star Destroyer as if we were really there. It cannot be easy to transform a movie, or an idea into a real-world experience. But the Imagineers do it. I am so excited to join that challenge someday. Even the early attractions, like the Carousel of Progress highlight the unique ways Disney engineers transformed visions into reality--the challenge of showing a 4-act production with entire scene changes to a sitting audience in the most efficient way possible must have been daunting, but now it's the longest-running stage show in America! The stories of Disney are inspiring. The rides are thrilling. The Imagineers are who made it happen. There's a "Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow," thanks in part to the Disney Imagineers bringing dreams to life.

Math is the secret language of the universe, but it is a secret we can learn. I remember the epiphany I had when I entered my first math contest in middle school, (six years ago!) and a question asked to show that there existed at least one 10-digit multiple of seven that contained all 10 digits from 0-9. I spent an hour jotting down notes, and looking at numbers until I saw patterns emerge. And when I did, it was as if my eyes were opened to a whole new language. Ever since, discovering patterns in nature, and the mathematical structure that underlies everything around us has fascinated me. There is nothing that doesn't distill down, at the root, to math. From the orbital structures of the smallest bits of matter to the fundamental shape and nature of the universe itself, everything is mathematical. And that means it is fundamentally, in principle, understandable--and that is inspiring. But math is more than just understandable--it is a voyage of discovery; it is a horizon that we can explore like the sailors of the Renaissance. Puzzles like Fermat's Last Theorem that look simple on the surface can be peeled open to reveal complexities that aren't solved for hundreds of years and will themselves reveal more puzzles, more advances, and more realms to discover. It is amazing to me that a sentence in the margins of a book can create entire fields of new discoveries and explorations. This is why I love math. Math promises us that we can understand the universe, challenges us to do so, and teases us that we may never quite cross the farthest horizon. And at the same time that math challenges us in the most esoteric ways, it also grounds us. In engineering classes, we use math to understand the most fundamental ways objects move, and machines work. Math pops up at the most unexpected moments in our daily lives. When we're at the grocery store, it's math that lets us know which toothpaste is the best value. When we oversleep, it's math that lets us know if we'll be late for school or not! While math is a beautiful puzzle in itself, it is also a direct connection to everything we do each day. Math reminds us that the world makes sense, and lets us make sense of the world. And that is why I love math.

If I could have everyone in the world read one book, it would be "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. This book follows the famous science fiction author (Adams), and naturalist (Carwardine) as they travel around the world on a journey to connect with some of the most endangered animals on the planet. No book has changed my life, or my perspective on the world nearly as much as this one. As the authors interact with animals that are among the last of their species, some of which, like the Northern White Rhino, are functionally extinct today (there are only two Northern White Rhinos remaining, and they are both female) they discover and share profound truths about the world and humanity's role in it. They show us that we are all connected: to each other, and to our planet. Adams' characteristic wit (he is best known for his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series) brings a reader gently along on this journey, but he never spares us the most brutal details of how these fragile species have arrived at their endangered state. Reading the tale of how the yang-tze river dolphins can no longer use their sonar to find their way through the motorboats, noise, and pollution of their home waters, I cried, and I believe anyone would. Our planet faces more environmental challenges and catastrophes today than ever before. Animals are dying with bellies full of plastic and trash, we're eating and drinking microplastics with every bite and sip we take, our climate is changing out of control, bringing unprecedented flooding and ecological disasters, and too many people aren't prepared to do even the barest minimum to turn this ship around. I would have everyone read this one book, "Last Chance to See," because it would give our planet and the life on it--including humanity--a last chance to survive.

Every morning, the children and the elderly of the village of Maphephetheni in South Africa used to need to walk to a river and return nearly a mile, uphill, carrying 6-gallon, 50-pound jugs of water. In 2006, volunteers from Engineers Without Borders developed a pump with only two moving parts that relied on the available energy from the river to send water back to the village. This technology inspires me, not high-tech, but low-tech: technology that is inexpensive, reliable, and life-changing. When I check my email on my smartphone or type this essay on a laptop, it’s easy to forget that technology isn’t just LED screens, AI, and solar panels; life-saving technology can be simple. A billion people worldwide lack access to water. Technology that can bring them clean water will not just change their lives, but will literally save lives. When I read that the technology to change these people's lives wasn't new generators, solar panels, genetically-engineered crops, or robot tractors, but a two-moving-part pump, my vision of the way technology could make the world a better place was turned upside down. Even as a high school student, this simple, reliable, but life-changing technology has already inspired my work. My robotics team recently competed in the FIRST Global Innovation Challenge. We were world runners-up in our division, and our technology had no electronics, and no moving parts yet will change the lives of many. We developed removable traction-enhancing wheel covers for wheelchair wheels. We discovered, by talking to people in our community, that wheelchair travel in icy and snowy environments was so difficult that many wheelchair-restricted people felt like prisoners in their own homes for months every year. Our device let them travel more confidently in slippery conditions and literally gave them back their freedom. Technology doesn’t have to be high-tech to be high-impact. With this in mind, I believe a diversity of minds can create a diversity of solutions to the challenges facing our planet. That's why I have organized over 50 STEM classes and camps for underrepresented groups, crafted a STEMinist series of just-for-girls STEM events, and done STEM activities with thousands of kids in our urban area. By expanding underserved and underrepresented communities' access to STEM, it is my hope that these students will be the ones to invent the next pump for the next village struggling to access the necessities of life.

In the village of Maphephetheni in South Africa, it was the job of the elderly and children to carry 6-gallon jugs weighing almost 50 pounds from a local river, uphill to water the village gardens. Those gardens provided their community with fruits and vegetables to eat. In 2006 the organization Engineers Without Borders developed a pump that only used two moving parts, and relied on the available energy from the moving water in the river to carry a small but continuous stream of water back up the hill to the village's garden. This is technology that inspires me. This is technology that is inexpensive, reliable, and simple enough to be built on-site with local materials. Don't get me wrong--there's a huge place for new software, AI, machine learning, and emerging tech in the coming world. I use that kind of technology on my robotics team, and I helped develop a nutrition app that won my district's Congressional App Challenge this year! But, for over a billion people, getting water is a daily struggle, not updating an app. Technology that can bring them water, and stabilize their food source will not only change their lives, but for many, it will literally save their lives. It's estimated that by 2025, almost 2/3 of the world's population may face water shortages, adding urgency to this sort of simple, but vital technology. That's why I am so passionate about providing STEM opportunities for underrepresented communities. I believe a diversity of minds, can create a diversity of solutions to the challenges facing our planet. When I was a Freshman, and I took an engineering class, my best friend and I were the only girls in the class. That's when I founded the 501c3 organization Greendale Robotics, Incorporated with the motto "STEM is for Everyone." Since that day the organization has provided over 50 STEM classes and camps to underrepresented groups, crafted a STEMinists series of just-for-girls STEM events, and done STEM activities with thousands of kids in the Milwaukee community including an entire Girl Scout region. By expanding underserved and underrepresented communities' access to STEM, it is my hope that these students will be the ones to invent the next ram pump for the next village struggling to access the basic necessities of life.

I'm a math girl who's a varsity athlete, a robot-engineer who plays the clarinet in a marching band, a Cadet Master Sargent in the US Civil Air Patrol who designs her own fashion. I believe there's no one else like me, and I have never met anyone to make me disbelieve that. Being a math-loving girl is a rare place to start. Research shows that by age 15, most girls have lost their interest in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields; whether because of social pressure, peer group changes, or any of a host of reasons, by the time a girl is a sophomore in high school the likelihood they're still interested in pursuing a STEM field is, sadly, low. In my own experience, the number of girls enrolled in engineering, and advanced math courses at my high school is disproportionately low. In fact, my best friend and I were the only girls enrolled in our school's introductory engineering course the year we took it. That was an eye-opener for me, and I immediately decided to start working to change that. I plan to continue to give back to my community by continuing my work to provide STEM opportunities and experiences for all students regardless of race, gender, background, or socioeconomic status. Let me start by describing what I've already achieved: as a Freshman, I started the 501c3 organization "Greendale Robotics, Incorporated," dedicated to supporting STEM programming in our community. At the time the organization included 6 students from Greendale and Milwaukee; today we are a group of 35 students from 11 different schools and homeschools including many from urban and underserved communities. We've offered low-cost STEM after-school programs throughout our community, including STEAM camps in socioeconomically challenged areas. We've done free STEM activities with thousands of kids and hosted an entire series of just-for-girls STEM programming and also did STEM and robotics activities for an entire Girl Scout region! Our organization is only 2 years old, but we've already seen the fruits of its work: enrollment by girls and underrepresented students in the STEAMfest (a science-fair-like event our team organizes at a local elementary school) has increased by 150% in the last two years, and enrollment by race, socioeconomic status, and gender in our after school STEM classes shows a similar increase! The data shows we're making a difference. As I move forward with my education, and ultimately my career, I don't plan to ever stop advocating and acting to create STEM opportunities for all students. STEM fields hold the solutions to many challenges facing life on our planet, challenges like emerging diseases, climate change, famine, and environmental catastrophes. I have core belief that STEM is for everyone, and I do not plan to stop making that belief a reality.

Math is the secret language of the universe, but it is a secret we can learn. I remember the epiphany I had when I entered my first math contest in middle school, (six years ago!) and a question asked to show that there existed at least one 10-digit multiple of seven that contained all 10 digits from 0-9. I spent an hour jotting down notes, and looking at numbers until I saw patterns emerge. And when I did, it was as if my eyes were opened to a whole new language. Ever since, discovering patterns in nature, and the mathematical structure that underlies everything around us has fascinated me. There is nothing that doesn't distill down, at the root, to math. From the orbital structures of the smallest bits of matter to the fundamental shape and nature of the universe itself, everything is mathematical. And that means it is fundamentally, in principle, understandable--and that is inspiring. But math is more than just understandable--it is a voyage of discovery; it is a horizon that we can explore like the sailors of the Renaissance. Puzzles like Fermat's Last Theorem that look simple on the surface can be peeled open to reveal complexities that aren't solved for hundreds of years and will themselves reveal more puzzles, more advances, and more realms to discover. It is amazing to me that a sentence in the margins of a book can create entire fields of new discoveries and explorations. This is why I love math. Math promises us that we can understand the universe, challenges us to do so, and teases us that we may never quite cross the farthest horizon. And at the same time that math challenges us in the most esoteric ways, it also grounds us. In engineering classes, we use math to understand the most fundamental ways objects move, and machines work. While math is a beautiful puzzle in itself, it is also a direct connection to everything we do each day from the acceleration of our cars to the metabolism of the food we eat. Math reminds us that the world makes sense. And that is also why I love math.

I will be known as the woman who developed the tools we needed to save the oceans, cool the earth, and clean the sky; as the woman who never stopped pursuing solutions no matter how insurmountable the challenges seemed or how many had tried before her; as the engineer who turned hope for the planet into a planet of hope.

As a 9-year-old girl without many friends, I set '1989' playing on a loop until my parents made me stop. I didn't know right away, but it would change my life that year, and continue to be a positive influence for the rest of my life. One song especially was, and is, a landmark for me: "Shake it Off." I mentioned I didn't have a lot of friends when '1989' debuted. "None" would be a more accurate description. I was always a little different from the other kids and never felt like I fit in. I had trouble reading and had to go to a special classroom during reading times, which didn't help either. To help me socialize, my parents tried to get me involved in lots of activities at school. Fortunately, this included Girl Scouts, where "Shake it Off," a camping trip, and a sing-along would combine to change my life. It was a winter campout in Wisconsin, which means it was an indoor campout. Our troop stayed for a weekend in a cozy cabin with a large front room with a big fireplace, where we roasted marshmallows, told stories, and played camp games--or most of the girls did; I mostly watched. That was until the troop leader mentioned that it was time for singing. He (we had a dad for a troop leader) had brought a small speaker and microphone and a handful of CDs for us to sing along to. I may not have been popular, but I was fearless, and when I saw one of the CDs he brought for us to sing with was '1989,' I volunteered to stand up in front of the group and sing my favorite song: "Shake it Off." I was nervous, of course, but I loved that song and loved to sing. So I sang. And when I got to the words "shake it off" a girl jumped to her feet, joined me in front, and sang along! Two is better than one! I felt like a big star. We finished the song together and spent the rest of the night as best friends. That was the best day. I knew that everything has changed. I felt bigger than the whole sky. She was my first real friend and still is my best friend. Thanks to "Shake it Off" I learned that it's nice to have a friend. Though many songs have come and gone since that night, that's why "Shake it Off" has remained my favorite song from '1989.' That wasn't the end of it though. Through the struggles and isolation of COVID, through other friends coming and going, "Shake it Off" has continued to be my bedrock. When quarantines meant that we couldn't visit, my friend from camp and I could still sing the hopeful message of "Shake it Off" to each other over the phone and feel safe and sound. That was our song; we were happy. We could remind each other that there will always be struggles, but we can get through. Both of us can shake it off and move on, and there are better things to come. Long story short, "Shake it Off" started as the favorite song of a 9-year-old, lonely girl because it was fun to sing and dance to. It's her favorite song 8 years later because it changed her life, and keeps her strong every day.

I believe innovation and invention are the keys to a better future. When my robotics team was a global runner-up in the 2021 FIRST Global Innovation Awards for our development of removable traction aids for wheelchairs, I realized that there are many challenges in the world just waiting for ideas to solve them. Ever since then, I have been a passionate advocate for using creativity to make the world around us better. I led my team's initiative to design and 3D print assistive devices for seniors in our community and we've distributed hundreds of devices making people's lives easier. I created a 501c3 organization, Greendale Robotics, Inc. which uses innovative funding streams to provide STEAM experiences and after-school programs to hundreds of students in our community. I've met with healthcare workers, senior groups, and families of students with disabilities, listened to them, and discovered that I can make a difference. So, how will this scholarship help with my career goals? It will allow me to continue developing ideas to solve the problems I can solve, while I am developing the skills to solve the problems that I can't yet surmount. I have decided to become an engineer, specifically an environmental engineer because many issues facing us are global. While studying engineering, my hope is to keep developing local solutions to problems in our community. This scholarship will let me focus on my passion, instead of focusing on my next meal. This scholarship will allow me to pursue my degree and at the same time continue to pursue my dream of advocating for and creating innovative change in my community. Langston Hughes asked, "What happens to a dream deferred?" This scholarship will help me not have to answer that question. There are hundreds of quotes from folks more famous than me, all reflecting on the idea that every challenge is an opportunity. Working in my community to help transform challenges into opportunities is something I would be devastated to lose. Whether I'm collaborating with the director of a local assisted living center to create a way to help their residents open their doors more easily, or meeting with community leaders to provide STEAM camps for kids in underserved communities, I am making a difference. This scholarship will let me continue to make those differences while I pursue the degree that will let me tackle even grander challenges, and create even grander opportunities.