Xochitl Roman

Engineering Futures Scholar

Xochitl Roman, an environmental engineering student at the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, said she’s known that she wanted to go into a STEM-related career since high school. She said she’s interested in researching different types of energy and how to apply them into our society and has always enjoyed building things in general.

Her high school didn’t offer many STEM-related extracurriculars, but she still joined other programs that would help grow her interpersonal skills, since she said that could help make her stand out in that career field. 

Roman is also a first-generation college student, and says her mom is very supportive of her, but said she feels some pressure to stay in school to be a good role model for her younger siblings and to inspire and motivate them to stay in school. 

“I feel like my mom tends to be really supportive, but she doesn’t really understand the workload or what goes into that type of work, ” Roman said. 

Roman said that since she’s been in college, she credits her suitmates for helping her overcome times that were difficult to find motivation, or manage time well to do homework. They also encouraged her to go to wellness nights held on campus for students to help manage the stress of school. 

“Basically just having them, I guess, encouraged me to go to those different events that the school is holding and then overall, just finding people to study with helped to hold myself accountable,” Roman said. 

One of the things that influenced Roman to choose this major was the financial security that it promised.

“It’s a little harder at home,” Roman said. “So I’d never wanted to be in a position where I would struggle to pay bills.”

Roman said she recommends incoming freshmen utilize the tutoring center and that time management is one of the biggest things to being successful in this major. She also said that she’s looking forward to starting upper-level classes that focus on her major more.

“The more I look at the major map, the more I’m excited to actually start upper division coursework … because that’s when it seems that it actually gets more specifically into different issues, environmentally related.” 

Expressing her excitement about engineering Roman said, “I want to be somebody who looks at problems through different perspectives.”

By Laura Stack, Science and Technology Writer, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
June 14, 2020