Name: Kathleen Lauser

 

Hometown: Collegeville, PA

 

High School: Spring-Ford

 

Activities Outside of WEPO: Research with Penn State Moringa Lab on sustainable water for developing countries, American Society of Chemical Engineers (AICHE), OXE-Chemical Engineering Honors Society

 

Internship/Co-Op Experience: Bristol-Myers Squibb 2014, NIST Fire Research 2013

 

Why did you choose to come to Penn State? It’s funny, I never imagined that I would come to a school as big as Penn State. I approached the decision as any want-to-be engineer would—I carefully listed all the must-haves—an excellent program, outstanding research opportunities, competitive tuition, tremendous campus recruiting (I’m running out of superlatives!) and with it spelled out, the decision was easy. Things like the SWE Stayover and the WEP Program were gravy. Now that I have found my “people” and a major that really works for me, I can’t imagine having gone anywhere else! WE ARE…

 

What has been your best memory as an engineering student? Oh, it is so hard to pick just one! Every memory with my “Fenske family” is a treasure. My best engineering memory however, is when my uncle gave me a really old slide rule. My grandfather died many years before I was born, but all my life I’ve been heard how great he was and how smart he was. The slide rule was my grandfather’s and my uncle gave it to me saying, “I think you may be the only one who knows how to use this.” I think my grandfather would be thrilled that I am in engineering. It was a special moment for me.

 

What has been your best memory as a Penn State student? Again with making me pick just one! Honestly, the moments that are the best memories are actually pretty ordinary. Walking by Old Main when the daffodils are blooming, standing and screaming until your body aches during football, feeling absolutely exhausted—totally spent after completing an assignment or exam and looking around the room at the amazing, wonderful, funny, gifted people who are every bit as exhausted as you are, trying to figure out how you managed to be so lucky to get those amazing, wonderful, funny gifted people in your life and realizing that’s the one question you’ll leave blank. Okay, I’ll pick the last one. That’s my memory and in retrospect there is nothing ordinary about it.

 

What advice would you give a first-year engineer? Don’t forget to be a good friend to your friends. Engineering is a fabulous program of study, but it is a hard one. You’ll never survive without your friends. You need them and they need you. Don’t get so caught up in you that you neglect them. And call home often. My mother commandeered the keyboard and added that last sentence. I think it is sound advice, so I left it in.

 

Give me one fun fact about yourself. In second grade I had to write a fact about myself. I wrote:
“I love egg salad.” I’m sticking with what works. I love egg salad.

 

 

Kathleen is a senior studying Chemical Engineering.