Marisa Dombeck, Mechanical Engineering

Why Porter

“I'm from Ashgrove, up north — one stoplight, one co-op grocery, one guidance counselor for the whole high school. My dad drives truck and my mom does the books for the feed mill. Nobody in my family went to college, so I didn't really know what you were supposed to look for. I picked Porter because it was the only place on my list where the tour went through a machine shop instead of past one.

“Honestly, the application helped. No essay, no fee. I didn't have anybody at home who could read an essay and tell me if it was good, so that mattered more than people think. My mom still has the admissions email printed out on the fridge.”

Marisa came in undeclared in engineering and chose Mechanical Engineering in her second semester, after ME 210 Statics — taught, every fall, by the provost. “Dr. Halvorsen puts a bridge truss on the board the first day and asks who would drive over it. Then he spends fifteen weeks making sure you'd know.”

The hands-on part

“First Forge was the first time I ever held molten anything. You pour a little pewter disc in the Founders Hall high bay during orientation, and a senior stands next to you telling you not to flinch. I flinched. Mine has a dent on one edge. I keep it on my keychain anyway.”

Two years later she spends most evenings in the same high bay with the Baja SAE team, where she leads the four-person suspension group. This year's car uses a redesigned rear trailing arm she modeled in her machine design course and then cut on the CNC mill in the makerspace.

• Hours in the shop: about 12 a week during build season, more the week before competition.
• Proudest part: a rear upright that weighs 340 grams less than last year's and survived the team's drop test on the first try.
• Least favorite part: “Welding fixture alignment at 11 p.m.”

Last summer she completed her first required co-op at Redgranite Precision Components, writing inspection plans for machined hydraulic fittings. “I measured a lot of parts. I learned that a drawing is a promise and the shop floor is where you find out if you kept it.”

A hard semester

“Spring of my first year I got a 54 on the first Calculus II exam. I'd been the math kid in Ashgrove, so I didn't know how to be bad at math. I didn't tell anybody for three weeks, which was the actual mistake.

“What fixed it was boring: I started going to the Tutoring & Learning Center twice a week, and my mentor from the First-Generation Center walked me through office hours, because I genuinely thought office hours were for people who were already doing well. I finished with a B-minus. I'm prouder of that B-minus than of anything on my transcript.”

She now works eight hours a week as a peer mentor in the same program, matched with three first-year engineering students. Her rule for them: “Tell someone in week one, not week four.”

Life outside the shop

Marisa lives in Millrace Hall, three minutes from Founders Hall “if you run, and I run.” She is a member of the First-Generation Student Network and the Society of Women Engineers, and she will be in the high bay again next Thursday helping with the public Foundry pour during Millrace Week. “My parents are driving down for it. My dad wants to see where the pewter came from.”

What’s next

Her second co-op, in summer 2027, will be back at Redgranite, this time in manufacturing engineering. After graduation she wants to work in product development for agricultural equipment, “something my uncles would actually use, and complain about, which is how you know it's real.”

Her advice to a high school junior in a town like Ashgrove: “Go on the tour that goes through the shop. If they won't show you the shop, ask why.”