Although senior Grace Parises ’25 always knew math was a passion, she didn't know how to incorporate that into her choice of major when she arrived at Cornell College.
“After taking my first class, Intro to Engineering, I never looked back and it was truly the right choice for me,” she says.
She loves how tight-knit the engineering department is, allowing her to become close to her professors and peers. She says the Cornell campus as a whole reflects this community mindset.
“Sometimes it feels like a small school doesn’t have all the opportunities that a large school does, but when you know everyone at your school personally, and they know you, it can really benefit you more than you would expect. You never have a class where you don’t know at least one person,” Parises says.
Parises found this community through her jobs as a resident assistant and tutor, as well as the Engineering Club. She felt especially close with the cross country and track teams.
“They are truly some of the most wonderful people I have ever met and I consider all of them family to me. I’m going to really miss them,” she says.
Parises will use her degree in engineering to work as a mechanical engineer at the same company where she interned, United Dynamics. Looking to the future, she hopes to accomplish many things.
“There is a master’s program at the University of Oklahoma for engineering leadership and management and I could see myself really enjoying that. I have a passion for teaching as well," she says. "As far as outside of work, I want to run a half marathon relay with my family and do triathlons with my boyfriend, Caleb Schopen ’25.”
For this senior profile, we asked Parises a few questions before she graduated. Here’s what she said in her own words:
How did Cornell help prepare you for the future?
Cornell's One Course At A Time truly showed me that I can accomplish hard things in short amounts of time. In my mechanical/aerospace internship I was required to balance a summer-long intern project along with helping three different engineers with their own projects. It seemed like a lot of work, but I knew that if I could take fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, or even differential equations in 18 days that all of my work was possible too. I was the only intern who completed the entire intern project and all the work given to me by the company that year and I think that really shows how the One Course In 18 days program can benefit students.
What is your favorite memory from being at Cornell?
My favorite memory from being at Cornell is cramming 10-15 of my friends in the RA office while I was on duty and playing games together. There were never enough chairs, but it didn't matter.
What experiential learning opportunities did you participate in and what did you learn from them?
I participated in an off-campus study class called Holocaust and Human Rights second block of my third year. I really enjoyed going abroad for the first time in my life and also taking a class that was outside of my major. I had never taken a history class at the collegiate level and it exercised a new set of skills that I hadn't used in a while, like deep emotional reflection on the places we visited and connecting what we saw back to its historical context. I also learned about different cultures from the different countries we went to: the Czech Republic, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Poland.
I also participated in a summer internship where I worked for a secondary contractor for the U.S. Air Force and retrofitted parts for different military projects. I learned so much about my field through this experience and got to apply the skills that I learned at Cornell to real-life projects. The biggest things I learned from this experience were geometric dimensioning and tolerancing and how to accurately re-engineer a part, and I think these skills will be very useful in my future career.
What is your advice to the classes behind you?
My advice to the classes behind me is: Do everything. Try everything. You are at a small school and have the ability and power to do that.
What would you tell a prospective student about Cornell?
I would tell a prospective student that Cornell is the only place in the world that I will call home that is outside of my home state. A piece of me will always be on this campus, and so if it feels right to you deep down, then it probably is right.