Student Accomplishments

Creating opportunities for women in engineering

Kristin Ehlers, president of the campus Society of Women Engineers, says the group often works with girls to show them engineering fundamentals and that “it's ok to be smart.” Ehlers benefited from scholarships and a named bequest helped Ehlers pay for her MU engineering education.

Ehlers recalls that when she was growing up, her sister wanted to be a doctor and she wanted to design the hospital. Now, her sister is in the MU School of Medicine and Kristin is enrolled in the MU College of Engineering.

Ehlers, from Kansas City, excelled in math and science in high school, but college would not have been assured without financial support from several public and private scholarships and bequests. Ehlers received help from the David S. Haffner Engineering Scholarship Fund, Missouri Society of Professional Engineers, Thrivent Financial, Halls Foundation, Park Hill Education Foundation, Bright Flight and the Anderson, Squire Bequest.

Ehlers is adamant that there should be more women in engineering. As president of the Society of Women Engineers, she organized workshops to take into fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms, an age she describes as a turning point in career interests, to show girls “it's okay to be smart.” When someone joked she just wanted to go to engineering school to get her “MRS degree,” she fumed. “Views like that are why there aren't more women in engineering.”

Ehlers plans to take advantage of MU's five-year program to combine engineering with an MBA and hopes, someday, to go into engineering management.