BPE Profile

In the high-altitude villages of Peru, where the air is thin and the mountains stand as silent sentinels, a quiet battle is underway. It’s a fight not for land or resources but for the survival of a language...

By the time Edith Clarke joined The University of Texas at Austin, becoming the first female electrical engineering professor in the U.S., she had already achieved legendary status among her peers.

ASE Distinguished Alumna Jeannie Leavitt set a course for future generations of female fighter pilots, including members of the Marvel Universe.

Katharine Fisher is this year's Outstanding Scholar-Leader for the Cockrell School of Engineering — an award that recognizes one graduating student annually for hard work and leadership inside and outside the classroom. However, things may have been very different had she not decided to check out an engineering outreach program on a whim in high school. The California-born, Texas-raised Fisher was always interested in building things and solving hard problems as a kid, a staple of the engineer's brain. But her early schooling did little to encourage this mindset, and slowly her interest in engineering and science drifted away.

Carmen Wright is the first Black woman to graduate with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from UT Austin. We sat down with Wright to learn more about her other "firsts" and how she encourages others to not let being the first deter you from reaching your goals, to let your idea of success evolve and change as life evolves, and to enjoy the journey rather than solely focusing on the end goal.

For two and a half years, fear and chaos defined Cockrell School alumna Azita Sharif’s daily reality as a teenager in the 1970s living through the Iranian Revolution – a revolution that led to a short civil war and a long, brutal international war with Iraq.

Catherine Dominic, a sophomore aerospace engineering major from Sugarland, Texas, was selected to receive a Brooke Owens Fellowship for 2021. Dominic joins two former students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics to receive the award — Josefina Salazar in 2018 and Mykaela Dunn in 2019.

Some little girls grow up wanting to follow in their father’s footsteps. Houston-native and recent Cockrell School of Engineering graduate Corrinne Cassel (B.S. ChE 2020) took this dream seriously, following her father’s footsteps right to the Forty Acres to pursue a degree in chemical engineering just like her dad, Craig Cassel (B.S. ChE 1987), did over 30 years earlier. Corrinne and her father now share a unique experience that few father-daughter duos can tout: they are both graduates of the Cockrell School’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering.

In celebration of Black History Month, the Cockrell School of Engineering hosted a panel featuring some of Texas Engineering’s most accomplished and dedicated Black alumni leaders: Tejuana Edmond (B.S. ChE 1998), Milton Lee (B.S. ME 1971) and Dr. Chad Wilson (B.S. ChE 1997). The Feb. 2 event was moderated by Alexander Tekle, a senior in the Cockrell School and current president of UT Austin’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. Over a hundred people tuned in.

Along with the Precursors, who were the first Black undergraduate students to enroll at UT Austin in 1956, Ervin Perry — who, in 1964, became the first Black faculty member at UT, a professor of civil engineering — helped pave the way for continued desegregation across the university and showed the importance of having Black professors at UT. He was also one of a small handful of Black graduate students at his time of enrollment and the first Black engineering Ph.D. student at UT.

Cockrell School of Engineering alumna Columbia Mishra has been named the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Foundation’s inaugural Lakshmi Singh Early Career Leadership Award winner. The award, named for a 31-year-old ASME leader who died unexpectedly in 2015, honors a young female engineer who distinguishes herself as a rising volunteer leader within ASME.

Cockrell School alumna Melanie Weber (B.S. ASE 2004) was one of four UT Austin alumni selected to receive the 2020 Outstanding Young Texas Exes Award. The prestigious award, first initiated in 1979, recognizes Texas Exes age 39 and younger who have made significant achievements in their careers and service to the university.

Stellar grades. Strong work ethic. Heavy involvement in networking organizations. The ability to land a top summer internship. We have come to identify these as key indicators of success in college and determining factors of post-college achievement. While the importance of academic performance cannot be ignored – especially as a student at the Cockrell School of Engineering – there is another factor perhaps more crucial to success than a flawless report card: community.

When he’s not serving as a technical sales consultant at Halliburton, Omar Gomez (B.S. Petroleum Engineering 2012) is an advocate for STEM education, mentoring younger generations interested in pursuing an engineering career. As an active member of the Cockrell School’s Equal Opportunity in Engineering Program (EOE) during his time as a Texas Engineering student, Gomez shared with us his experiences in EOE and how the program positively impacted his life and set him up for success.

Archie L. Holmes Jr., vice provost for academic affairs at the University of Virginia, will be the next executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at The University of Texas System. The appointment will be a homecoming for Holmes, who grew up in Texas, received his B.S. in electrical engineering in 1991 from UT Austin and was a faculty member in the Cockrell School of Engineering for a decade before joining the University of Virginia.

To be an undergraduate student in the Cockrell School of Engineering means you are opening doors for your future as you pursue a degree that will help you impact society and change the world. It also means that for the length of time it takes to complete said world-changing degree, you are BUSY.

Class of 2020 mechanical engineering graduate Tyson Smiter, who has been heavily involved in student organizations and committed to his academics since he joined the Cockrell School of Engineering, has been named this year’s Outstanding Scholar-Leader. Every year, the Cockrell School selects an Outstanding Scholar-Leader from among the senior class, recognizing a candidate whose hard work and dedication, both in and out of the classroom, exemplify leadership and inspire our community. The student must have completed at least 60 credit hours at UT Austin and maintained at least a 3.8 in-residence GPA.

Every year, the Alcalde flips the script and gives alumni the chance to give their favorite professors an A+. Through nominations from former students, the Texas Ten honors professors who have made a difference in the lives of Longhorns. From the musician who instills the power of music in young children to the engineer who loves to problem solve and the mathematician who is determined to see his students succeed, there is no doubt the 2020 class of the Texas Ten is one deserving bunch.

Since 1985, the Texas Exes has recognized students who have demonstrated remarkable leadership within the Longhorn community with the President’s Leadership Awards. Of the six recipients for 2020, three are Cockrell School of Engineering students: Mamadou Balde, chemical engineering senior, Josefina Salazar Morales, aerospace engineering senior, and Tyson Smiter, mechanical engineering senior.

When Cockrell School alumna Jill Meyers opens her laptop, an image of a Pilatus PC-12 in flight lights up the screen, serving as a daily reminder of the inspiration for her career in aerospace engineering.