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Tomorrow's OSU Engineers: Worldly Wise and Driven to Help the World

Meghaan Smith lost both her grandmothers to breast cancer long before she was born. Her parents, just 15-year-old kids when their mothers died, have too few stories to share with Meghaan about the grandmothers she's never known. But it is the absence of these grandmothers that is the driving force behind Meghaan's decision to study chemical engineering at OSU and one day become a cancer researcher helping discover a cure for the disease that robbed her of knowing what it's like to have a grandmother.

Kira Ellsaesser's 14-year-old sister has a disability that confines her to a wheelchair.

OSU freshman engineering students Meghaan Smith (left, in costume for OSU Theater's production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well) and Kira Ellsaesser represent a new generation of OSU Engineering students Both did research in OSU labs while still in high school and both have outside interest including theater, rock climbing, and photography in addition to engineering.

Kira always thought she wanted to be a doctor in order to help her sister and others, but something about the medical field didn't click for Kira. Engineering, however, did click— literally. One day, she was working with two pencils, one round, the other hexagonal. The round one kept rolling off her desk. Then it dawned on her that the hexagonal pencil had been engineered not to roll. "I realized that everything you see has been engineered, that the future of tomorrow is designed today," she says. "It just clicked, and I knew I was going to be a mechanical engineer. I wanted to be part of that creation."

Both women are freshmen at OSU Engineering and exemplify the type of students the College is

attracting as it builds a top-25 program. Both have perfect grades, SAT scores in the stratosphere, and are extremely well rounded, with interests ranging from Meghaan's love of theater, yoga, and Shakespeare to Kira's affinity for rock climbing, pole vaulting, and photography. Both attended Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis where they helped found the school's first engineering club, and both want to help impact the world in a positive way.

"I want to build a spectacular future that will make the world a better place to live, to use my creativity and knowledge to benefit the world around me," Kira says. And Meghaan is determined to help find that elusive cure for cancer.

Although they weren't close in high school, they now share an apartment near campus. Although they could have studied engineering anywhere, they chose OSU— where they did research while still in high school and where they say the people make all the difference.

"I've not yet met a professor or student here that I didn't like," Kira says. "Everyone is very friendly and interested in what you're doing."

During high school, Meghaan spent time on campus with the Summer Experience in Science and Engineering for Youth (SESEY) where she discovered her passion. "I found that I possessed a passion for research, and that chemical engineering would allow me to feed this burning fire," she says. "Chemical engineering has revealed things to me about the world, about myself, and about my dreams that I never knew before."

Kira spent last summer doing microscale flow analysis for OSU's MECS research program with mechanical engineering assistant professor Deborah Pence.

"Even before she began her undergraduate coursework at OSU, Kira was working on a state-of-the-art research project typically reserved for graduate students," Pence says. "She's a truly outstanding individual, and I feel privileged to have her working in my laboratory."

Last summer, Meghaan worked in an OSU chemical engineering lab with associate professor Skip Rochefort researching synthetic replacements for hyaluronic acid in knee joint lubrication.

"Meghaan has all the qualities of a good engineer and a good person—talent, enthusiasm, breadth of experience, maturity, and excellent people skills," Rochefort says. "That she exhibits this level of sophistication at such a young age bodes well for her future. That she's chosen to attend OSU makes me very happy!"

Both women won numerous scholarships, including AeA Intel scholarships worth $10,000, OSU Diversity Scholarships worth $7,200, the College of Engineering Dean's Scholarships, and others.

"OSU was the best choice for me," says Meghaan, whose scholarships will completely pay for her undergraduate education, and who passed up offers from Johns Hopkins University and other top schools. "The opportunity at OSU for me to pursue research early-on is just what I wanted."

As they become engineers, both women hope to shatter a few stereotypes along the way.

"The stereotype is that engineers sit in cubicles all day by themselves staring at computers and don't talk to anybody," Meghaan says. "That's just wrong. Engineers work in teams, are dependent on others, and are not all men. I like the idea of being a pioneer in a maledominated field."

Both women say they had dolls as children. "Instead of playing with them, though, I took them apart and put them back together again," Kira says.

"And I had dolls, too, but I also had an erector set," adds Meghaan, with a grin.