Tech Grand Challenge Scholar joins Phillip 66

When mechanical engineer and Grand Challenge Scholar Carli Raupp joined Phillips 66 in Lake Charles this summer, she carried four years of experience collaborating with peers and professors, building prototypes, and performing research to the company.

As a Grand Challenge Scholar and a mechanical engineering major at Louisiana Tech University, Raupp spent her academic career elbows deep in hands-on and service projects.

She began her journey with Louisiana Tech joining the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Association of Catholic Tech Students, and the Freshman Engineering and Science Council her first year on campus.

The following year, she joined the sophomore Lambda Sigma honors society. Adding to her busy schedule, Raupp officially joined the University’s Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP) her sophomore year, selecting an area of focus in personalized learning so that she could learn skills to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and change the world.

Tech’s interdisciplinary engineering curriculum provided her with opportunities to complete the five competencies of the GCSP (interdisciplinary, talent, viable business/entrepreneurship, multicultural, and social consciousness) early in her academic career.

By the end of her freshman year, before even hearing about the Grand Challenge Scholars Program at Louisiana Tech, Raupp had completed the interdisciplinary competency of the program by completing an honors political science class.

The same year, she also built an Arduino bot, a fish tank, and a prototype that collected litter in public spaces that she and her team presented at the College of Engineering and Science Freshman Design Expo.

During her sophomore year, Raupp began focusing on completing the remaining four competencies of the Grand Challenge Scholars Program.

She completed the business/entrepreneurship competency by presenting AutomAbility, a remote control toy car that allows children with limited muscle function to operate a toy with their eyes in the 2019 Top Dog Idea Pitch competition with her project partner, McKenna Barker (biomedical engineering).

After putting the finishing touches on her time at Tech, completing the Grand Challenge Scholars Program, and presenting a final project at the 2021 Senior Projects Conference, what advice does Raupp have for incoming College of Engineering and Science students?

“Get involved with anything that’s possible. I’ve met a lot of my best friends through these organizations. You meet some really incredible people that make college go a lot easier.”