Women Engineers: Many Paths to a Rewarding Life

Christiana Taylor ’05
Going faster

“I like biology, I just like things that go fast better.”

B.S. in Aerospace Engineering '05.

Currently a doctoral candidate in Aerospace Design at Georgia Tech.

Originally, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, because in high school, you take biology first. That was my goal, until I took physics and then wanted to build things. Building things fascinates me, and I still want to be an astronaut someday.

I like biology, I just like things that go fast better.

I’m now a third year graduate student at Georgia Tech doing a Ph.D in aerospace design. No one ever deterred me from engineering. My mom was a teacher and always said to go as high as you can in education, don’t give up on anything.

I came to Boston for model congress in high school and fell in love with the city. I wanted to live in Boston, so came to BU.

I was grateful to live on an engineering floor because I wanted to be around other engineers. It was good because my floor was really close -- we were like a family. We did everything together.

I remember being excited to get to sophomore, junior, senior year -- to get to the engineering part of classes. I also went out on Fridays, enjoyed my life. I had to work harder during the week to do that, but you don’t have to be at a computer 28 hours a day.

Study abroad in Dresden was the most amazing experience in my life. I actually learned German. I hung out with the Germans and got to see the city and the culture.

For girls going in to engineering, having women role models – just having women come in and have coffee and tell about their lives, how it worked out for them – that’s encouraging. I did an internship at General Electric and it was mostly men, but I went and talked to some of the women at the company. You may have to network a little more, go to more conferences. They’re out there, but you may have to look for them a little bit, and you can learn so much about what women have gone through, what you’re going through and how you can relate it.

If someone tells you it’s not hard, they’re lying to you, but you can make it through. There are women engineers out there, there are role models.