Submission Number: 513
Submission ID: 1659
Submission UUID: 4cfda8e1-a405-47ad-b985-f129e9369a88

Created: Tue, 04/01/2025 - 23:37
Completed: Tue, 04/01/2025 - 23:38
Changed: Mon, 04/21/2025 - 17:19

Remote IP address: 71.218.55.7
Submitted by:Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Locked: Yes
Yes
Greta
Lillstrom
She/They
Lafayette
CO
United States
80026
Aerospace Engineering
English (5), Spanish (3)
Throughout my life, I have always loved to travel throughout the US and out of the country. In 6th grade, I had the opportunity to go with nine students and two teachers from my school to Australia with the International School to School Experience(ISSE) for 3 weeks. During the trip, I got to tour Sydney and stay with a host family in Melbourne, go to school with my host sister, and experience the culture in Australia by visiting zoos, beaches, footy games, and other culturally significant locations. This experience allowed me to gain a greater understanding of what life is like in a different country, with things like food, manners, and dynamics that are different from those in the US.
During the summers while in high school, I have had the opportunity to visit different countries with my local church on mission trips, going to Belize, Jamaica, and Costa Rica. On these trips, instead of going to the most popular areas, we went into the country to rural towns, staying in old church buildings, sleeping and eating together as a group every day for a week. During the day, we got to partner with people in the community to help build new churches by providing manual labor, digging trenches, moving rocks, mixing concrete, and doing any other things we could help with. We also got to spend time with the kids in the communities at the kids’ camp that the churches held. In Belize and Costa Rica, we had a language barrier due to these countries primarily speaking Spanish. Despite my broken Spanish from learning in school, it was still an incredible experience being able to connect with the people in these communities. Getting immersed in different cultures, away from any normalcy, and not having access to my phone is an incredible experience that I would love to do as much as I can.
These experiences outside of the US have prepared me well to be a part of the Global Engineering RAP, understanding the living experiences of different cultures, whether it is a first-world or third-world country.
Understanding the state of different countries around the world is crucial for improving the field of engineering across the world. Engineering can be used to help different countries with different needs, like access to clean and safe drinking water, or other living necessities. While on the mission trips, I witnessed the difficulty it can be to accessing clean and safe water, and the necessary filtration for water. While things like water safety in civil engineering aren’t my main interest in engineering, I find it very important to use skills in any job to help others around the world as much as I can, fulfilling needs for people to live comfortably.
I want to be a member of the Global Engineering RAP at CU Boulder because I believe that it is important to gain an understanding outside of the bubble that we live in in Colorado and the US. Learning about this in school would be very beneficial for my future career as an engineer, learning and continuing to have a global outlook on life, not only considering local and national issues, but also international and global issues. Being able to bring many different outlooks and perspectives on life in a field that isn’t typically composed of minorities, especially when it comes to countries with less wealth, will be a very valuable quality in any field of engineering or jobs outside of engineering. While living in this RAP in my freshman year, my experience of being out of my comfort zone on the trips I have been on will be very beneficial to my success and joy of living in a dorm. Being able to connect and live with people who have similar interests and values to me seems like a very fun living environment that would be very fulfilling to my educational experience at CU.