On Friday, February 10, college juniors Sarah Ahmad and Megana Audipudy, and college sophomores Nancy Yao and Rika Ko were happy to discuss their Design Thinking & Communications (DTC) experience at Northwestern University and how that helped them find a major. The interview took place in Dr. Liang’s Leadership Office with Mrs. Locher and her Principles of Engineering class.

DTC is a required course at Northwestern for freshman undergraduate students at the McCormick School of Engineering. This 20 week course is also offered to any student generally interested in design. The basic concept of the course is dedicated to building and designing prototypes based on observations and ideas. As many of the girls said, DTC allowed them to get a sense of building and as a result, found their passion for engineering.

Each student explained how they became interested in engineering. Their paraphrased responses are noted below:

Megana Audipudy said she had an undecided major, but pursued her interest in science and math. She took a summer course as in engineering at Purdue University during her freshman year. With this experience, she was able to contribute her ideas, which helped with her decision to pursue engineering.

Nancy Yao said she, too, was undecided at first. She pursued her interest in math and science.  She completed a Rising Senior Summer program for women in engineering which inspired her. She also worked in a software engineering internship at Facebook in California last year.

Nancy said, “I felt like I wanted to do something where I was directly applying my skills so that I could make a difference.”

Rika Ko was stuck at a crossroads; she said she applied to Northwestern as a biology major, but then switched to engineering a month later. She said DTC exposed her to new ideas.

Sarah Ahmad was inspired by an egg drop challenge she took part in during her junior year of high school. She said college gave her more flexibility and widespread options for college majors.  Finally, she expressed her thoughts on DTC and leadership by giving an example of when she had to deal with an unmotivated student.

She was being a leader of a team and stated that, “We had an honest conversation about feeling transparent about how others were feeling.”

She expressed that the DTC course is not just building things, but also learning to be a part of a team. Students must come up with ideas because many activities require a lot of brainstorming. This example taught her how to navigate the situation better. Playing an active role is crucial to coming up with the best possible prototype.