Olivia Clark

Inspire helped me grow as a person because there were so many electives I was able to take from freshmen year on—and I had the unique opportunity to focus on engineering and dance. I was mainly a ballet dancer, but in the dance program, I was able to try out different styles and work with dancers I wouldn’t have met otherwise. The dance shows are also student choreographed, which some of my best friends did, and I got to be part of their creation, which was really fun.

All the engineering classes are very hands-on. For example, sophomore year, there is a maze competition, where you work in groups of four or five, and design a robot to function without remote controls and the entire classroom becomes a maze. And in the STEM capstone project senior year, I worked with a partner and created an artificial environment to test the effects of added oxygen on insect size. We were able to run an engineering project and an actual science experiment.

A couple of weeks after graduation, I started my first major career internship as a structural engineering intern, and in the fall, I’m going to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo as a civil engineering major. I want to design buildings and bridges and maybe work with Engineers Without Borders.