Hallo! My name is Catherine Shea, and I am a rising sophomore mechanical engineering student. I chose to pursue engineering because of my passion for robotics and design work that I developed while on my high school robotics team for four years. Since beginning college, I have become very invested in extracurriculars. I am executive board member of Pitt’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), working as a co-lead for our primary international project in Ecuador. I am also an active member of our Women’s Self Defense Club and I am planning to join Pitt’s Latino Student Association in the upcoming semester. Academically, I have begun pursuing a sustainability certificate, and a joint innovation, product design, and entrepreneurship certificate. I will also be exploring a Spanish minor and engineering for humanity certificate if my schedule allows.

I am choosing to take these certificates and minor classes because of my career goals after college. I knew going into college that I wanted to work in robotics, but since joining EWB and exploring communities on campus, I have found a new passion for humanitarian and environmental work. My ideal career would be to use robotics in some way to assist aide towards environmental and humanitarian problems worldwide. I have found this to be very niche and a bit vague, and I am still exploring what this could physically look like or if I need to adjust my goals, but I hope that my chosen certificates and minor will help me refine what a job like this could realistically look like in the future.

I will be traveling to The Netherlands for my Plus3 trip. I chose this because of its focus on sustainability within engineering across different industries. My goal for this trip is to see what sustainability physically looks like within a workplace to gain a better idea of what careers focused towards sustainability consist of. I also hope to simply learn more about sustainability has a whole outside of engineering by seeing how prioritizing it affects other aspects of life, such as infrastructure, design, and culture.

Personally, I am very excited to explore and new country and get to learn more about other cultures and ways of life. While I have traveled outside the country before, I have never been to the Netherlands or a country that speaks a Germanic language besides English. I expect for the language barrier to be a challenge, and to possibly experience a bit of culture shock, but those are challenges I look forward to taking on.

I am very eager to learn more about sustainability and Dutch culture with a great group of students and mentors I am lucky to call my peers.

Tot ziens in Nederland!