I have made it my life's mission to continue to serve my community. I first fell in love with community service when I attended the Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership (VA) Virginia seminar during my sophomore year in high school. I love to help people. It is why I chose my major of civil engineering. While due to economic reasons, I currently cannot serve my community as much as I would like to. My end goal is still the same. I am serving as an officer in Virginia Tech's chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and I want to bring this mindset to our chapter. Yes, we are a professional society first, but we are also a community. A group of people who gather to celebrate our shared passion for this field who also share a love for the city of Blacksburg, Virginia. As an officer, I want to start doing some more service oriented activities. We happened to be situated in an area of Virginia with beautiful nature and this land was meant to be enjoyed by all around us. I would like to plan some river and park cleanups. It will allow us to not only serve our community, but also connect it to our common goals. Furthermore, environmental protection is a core aspect of our field. At Virginia Tech, the department is still called the Charles E. Via Jr Department of Civil AND Environmental Engineering. In countless ways, civil and environmental engineering are highly linked fields, and pollution control is a large part of what many environmental engineers do on a daily basis. I want to reframe engineering as not a field about unsustainable growth. When many hear the world ‘engineer’, they think of fancy labs, gas guzzling cars, and pollution generating rockets. They think of these ‘sexy’ innovations that may not be the most environmentally conscious. Civil engineering is different. It’s not considered ‘sexy’ by most people, but it is real, impactful, and sustainable. I want to use my platform as an engineer to make real impact on our planet. Change happens one step, one day at a time. I have an insane work ethic, ask my coworkers at Wawa, or the lovely team of volunteers I worked with as president of my high school’s BETA Club chapter. I love work. As the late president Theodore Roosevelt said, “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”. I first heard that quote my sophomore year in high school, watching hit show Parks and Recreation. And it has served as my compass in life. I once wanted to build rockets, but I could never look at myself in the mirror knowing that my innovations were used to harm innocent human beings or the environment. Instead, I will be designing roads, bridges, and neighborhoods that people want to use. That is the greatest gift of all.

College will allow me to pursue one of my greatest passions on a much larger scale, making a difference in the lives of others. As president of my Beta chapter, I have prepared numerous community service projects improving various aspects of the community, anything from helping run a blood drive to cleaning up local streets. There are innumerable more projects I would like to accomplish, but my club merely does not have the time or resources to complete them successfully. I am excited to be in a larger community in college and be able to help the local community. As a student, one does so much to help oneself so it always feels good to give back. Simple, small changes, can create cleaner, happier communities in the long run. Every time I complete a service project and make my small town just a small amount better, it is the best feeling in the world. That thrill of having made someone smile or cleaned up a street makes all the long preparation meetings and paperwork worth it. That pure satisfaction keeps me going, even on my darkest days. The idea of being able to do it on even a slightly larger scale is intriguing to me and beyond compelling.  College will also allow me to see a greater perspective on the world. Coming from a small town, I do not see diversity in my everyday life. My hometown is 87% white, this has limited my worldview greatly. When I attended the Pathways for Future Engineers program at Virginia Tech, it was a world of difference. I would spend hours talking with my friends about our unique cultures and upbringings. It was so impactful and riveting. Understanding and accepting a diverse world will help me become a more well-rounded person and professional. Being exposed to all of these distinct cultures will equip me with a more objective depiction of the real world that I live in. I was recently accepted into Virginia Tech through their CEED department and it is my top choice for a university. All of the current students and alumni I have spoken to have told me about how tight-knit their community is at Virginia Tech. It is a large university with over 30,000 students but that does not mean they do not have each other's backs. Having that sort of support system for the rest of my life is a gift, and is one of the many reasons that Virginia Tech is my top choice.

As a woman in STEM and a high school senior, I have already gotten a glimpse into the challenges I will face as I further my career. I distinctly remember in Chemistry I Honors, doing a lab with a male lab partner and administrators walking in to do an observation. They came around asking people about what they were doing and why. When they came to my lab area, they started asking questions to my lab partner and not me despite my partner's lack of understanding. Every time, I tried to get a word in, they would simply cut me off before I could even finish my sentence. These actions may seem small, but they make it so that a woman's words and opinions are seen as less valuable than a man's. They are remnants of a different time, and just because by law men and women are equal does not mean that socially they are equal. Social change takes far longer than legal change. I have recently been accepted to Virginia Tech College of Engineering. I will be majoring in Civil Engineering and minoring in Green Engineering. My whole life I have seen problems in my community, but more importantly I see solutions. I grew up watching my father work hundred-hour weeks to provide for my family. He did this not just to put food on the table but because he loved to work. I happen to share that passion. The education that Virginia Tech will provide me will give me the experience and knowledge to help make the world a better place. I love to help people, it’s an innate desire. I run my high school’s recycling program, recycling hundreds of pounds annually. It is work that I can see the impact of in my community. I can see the countless bags full of recycled goods that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill. I intend to spend the rest of my working years doing that sort of community-centered work. If chosen for this scholarship, it will be used to make the world a better place. My ambition and drive combined with being able to access situations quickly on my feet will prove vital to my career as a civil engineer.