What Made You Decide to Attend UMD?
Once I knew that I wanted to study fire protection engineering, I knew UMD was the only place for me (literally though, it's the only undergraduate fire protection engineering program!) Aside from that, I knew that I wanted to go to a big school, near a city, with a great campus community. UMD checked all of those boxes for me and I always felt welcome on campus, so I knew that UMD was the school for me.

Best Experience with a Class or Project
In ENFP101, which is a one-credit class for first year students in fire protection, we worked in teams to build a fire experiment. One day, we tested it and we added too much fuel so it was still burning at the end of class, so our professor said that he would wait with it until it went out and he would put it away. My teammates and I left, and I was sitting at lunch when we all got an email from our professor with the subject "Your experiment." In the email, he told us that our project had "unfortunately ignited" and, while it had been extinguished, it was now unusable! Luckily, we didn't have to redo the project, so it just became a great story to tell about the uniqueness of fire protection.

Favorite Class In Major
ENFP250: Introduction to Life Safety Analysis

Favorite Class Out of Major
HONR299G: Revolution, Regret, and Reform: The People and Principles of the American Political Tradition

Student Organizations/Extracurricular Activities
Society of Fire Protection Engineers, Flexus Living and Learning Community, University Honors, WIE Peer Mentor, Society of Women Engineers, Ceramics classes at Studio A

Favorite On-Campus Event
My freshman year for the Homecoming Comedy Show, John Mulaney came to campus! I love John Mulaney so that has definitely been a highlight of my experience at UMD.

Favorite Research or Study Abroad Experiences
I had the opportunity to participate in research in ENFP429 on the problem of fires in informal settlements, which are communities, such as refugee camps, that are unregulated. I used data from South Africa to examine the causes of fires in these communities and to create a set of surveys that could be implemented to provide more data on fire causes. It was eye-opening to learn about the severity of this problem and it made me want to work to reduce the level of inequity in fire safety globally.

Cool Engineering Experience
I had an internship with the National Park Service and as a part of the that I was involved in the 4th of July fireworks on the National Mall! For about two weeks before, I helped with inspecting the set-up of the fireworks to make sure that everything was safe and according to code. The best part was on the night of the 4th of July, when I got to stand basically right underneath the fireworks for the show!

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