Student spotlight: Teresa Myrthil

At the age of nine, Teresa Myrthil decided to become an engineer. She chose chemical engineering in middle school, when she was involved with chemistry events for Science Olympiad. She now has a much more nuanced understanding of chemical engineering, and she's happy with her choice. "I think it's the most versatile engineering major," she says. "We're learning so many different things that can be applied to a lot of scenarios and career paths."

Myrthil advises chemical engineering students to "go into it knowing that you don't know everything and that there are probably a lot more doors open to you than you realize exist."

Her most recent summer internship is one example. She worked in engineering technical sales, a job she hadn't heard of before. Myrthil was intrigued that it had an engineering aspect and a business aspect.

The internship was with Nalco Water, an Ecolab company. Myrthil did bacteria testing of the water for hospitals and hotels in Miami and worked with their cooling tower systems. She was also responsible for selling new products and services to existing customers.

Myrthil learned about Ecolab and their internships at a National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) conference. She's been involved with NSBE since her first year at Carnegie Mellon and served as chapter president last year. Myrthil says she's most proud of helping to revive NSBE as a student organization after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although she lived on campus both semesters of her first year, all her classes were virtual. "It was hard to make relationships that first year because everybody was just a box on the screen and most people didn't even have their cameras on," she remembers. The transformation of life on campus since then is a highlight of her CMU experience.

To help younger students navigate CMU, Myrthil is an ambassador for the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion and for the ORIGINS Experience. ORIGINS is a year-long inclusion program focused on community building and leadership development for historically and socially marginalized first-year students, regardless of gender identity, gender expression, race, ethnicity, creed, color, sexual identity, national origin, religion/spirituality, age, (dis) ability or associational preferences. It centers first generation and under-resourced student populations and is open to all students. "The ambassadors are there as resources for the first-year students, peers they can reach out to," says Myrthil. She has facilitated table conversations during staff-led pre-orientation sessions. She's also led her own sessions and small group outings.

Myrthil serves on the College of Engineering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Student Advisory Committee, as well. Her campus leadership roles inform her research.

Through the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU) program, Myrthil participated in the Establishing New Generations of scholars to Amplify and Grow Engineering Education (ENGagED) REU at Arizona State University. She joined a research group focusing on the experiences and mental health of women in STEM Ph.D. programs.

Something that stands out to me is how easy it is to get involved with research or connect with a professor.

Teresa Myrthil, Undergraduate student, Chemical Engineering

At CMU, she is continuing research in the field of engineering education. "Something that stands out to me is how easy it is, not only within ChemE but at the university, to get involved with research or connect with a professor," she says. Myrthil works with Kevin Jarbo in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. "We're looking at equity ethic, which is essentially a principled concern for social justice and reducing inequities. It's a recently-published concept, so we're trying to validate the scale and then specifically looking at how equity ethic might affect which college a STEM student might choose to attend," she explains.

Myrthil intends to pursue a Ph.D. in engineering education and then work in industry. She wants to balance her technical background as a chemical engineer with the social sciences and psychology components of engineering education. "Finding a way to combine those two things into an interesting career is my goal. CMU is very interdisciplinary, and it's set me up to do that," Myrthil says.