UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) congratulates Bekah Schrader on receiving the Women in Engineering Advancement Award through the Women in Engineering Department at the A. James Clark School of Engineering, University Maryland College Park (UMD).  

Last year, Bekah joined the Research, Instruction, and Service in Engineering (RISE) Leadership Academy at UMD. RISE is a program that aims to integrate select students with exceptional leadership potential into the engineering college. Selection occurs within the sophomore year based on a combination of academic performance (GPA), faculty recommendation and demonstration of leadership throughout the duration of the first three semesters. Students can be nominated by staff or choose to apply for consideration of membership.

As part of a service project for the program, Bekah and other members of RISE formed a team to address the inequalities surrounding women in engineering. They crafted a free of cost, virtual summer program open to all middle and high school students, targeted at women interested in engineering research. This program was successfully launched last summer.

Bekah’s team was named recipient of the Women in Engineering Advancement Award in April, for their efforts and dedication to furthering engineering education for women through the RISE Summer Research Program.

UMD Engineering is hosting the virtual program once again in August 2022. The program provides an introduction to engineering research and allows students to participate in at-home friendly experiments linked to different disciplines of engineering each day of the week. Students will learn about a wide variety of topics, such as UMD research labs and how to read and write scientific papers. 

Bekah started as an intern for FSRI during the summer of her freshman year. She graduated from UMD in the spring and is now pursuing a Master’s degree as part of FSRI’s Fellowship Program.