MaKenzie Paige Fockler
UW Honors Graduates
MaKenzie Paige Fockler
Civil Engineering
Designation: College Honors
Honors Grads 2018/2019
Proudest Moment: A toss up between becoming a Bonderman fellow and successfully getting water to 9 homes in rural Nicaragua.
Thesis: An Analysis and Application of Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions in Seattle
makenzie.fockler@gmail.comMy time at UW helped me continue to cultivate a passion for international development work and find ways to use my engineering degree to positively impact others. As a first-year, I joined Engineers without Borders and joined the executive committee. By the end of my first-year year, I started our new international program in Tortuga, Nicaragua, where I got to lead three trips down to the community to work on water and sanitation projects before the political chaos broke out in April 2018. This organization played a huge role in my time at UW and I served as President during my senior year. I also volunteered by teaching an English class to immigrants, refugees, and visiting scholars for over a year at an institution near campus. I spent a few summers serving as a camp counselor at Dunes Bible Camp in Ocean Park, WA and interned at RH2 Engineering as part of their water and sanitation group.
During Winter quarter of my senior year, I studied abroad in Bangalore, India as part of the Grand Challenges Impact Lab. For the first 3 weeks, I learned about different humanitarian problems facing both India and the world as a whole, such as water scarcity, adequate sanitation, waste management, education, and sustainable building materials. Then, the other 7 weeks, I interned at APSA, an education-focused NGO based in Bangalore. I helped with career counseling and analyzing an educational computer program at a school for girls who were rescued from sex trafficking, abuse, and other tough backgrounds. For my capstone, I worked in a team to develop the plans for a start-up called the Mobile Learning Center, which combined hands-on learning and career counseling at underprivileged schools through Bangalore.
Overall, I have gotten a lot out of my time at UW and am grateful for all the experiences I have had the last four years. My next great adventure is the Bonderman Travel Fellowship, which is 8 months of solo travel that I am leaving for at the end of June. I am very honored to have been selected for this fellowship and cannot wait to leave! My potential future plans involve becoming a WASH volunteer in Peace Corps, working at a consulting engineering firm focused on water and sanitation, continuing to be involved in community-driven development projects, and maybe going to grad school to study low resource engineering.