By Gabby Benedict, CEC Student Intern

Lielyn Mercer is a sophomore Chemical Engineering major with a Humanitarian Engineering and Computing minor at Miami University’s College of Engineering and Computing and is interested in doing cancer research.

Mercer came to Miami as a Biomedical Engineering student, but soon realized she wasn’t interested in the medical field or working with prosthetics, so she switched to Chemical Engineering. In addition, Mercer had also hoped to add a minor when coming to Miami but didn’t want to add additional stress to her engineering major.

“Humanitarian [engineering] caught my eye because it has classes that are outside of typical math and science classes. I love engineering, but I did want something a little different to break up my day,” Mercer said.

Mercer added the Humanitarian Engineering minor because it would show employers that she was well rounded and, in addition to her knowledge of chemical engineering, would help her become more globally aware, culturally sensitive, and socially conscious when creating potential solutions for ethical problems.

A majority of the classes for Mercer’s minor can count toward her Miami Plan classes, which are required for every Miami student to complete before graduation. 

During the first semester of her freshman year at Miami, Mercer struggled to keep up in a class where every other student around her was a year ahead of her.

“It really pushed me to work hard, and at first, I was like, ‘I'm dropping engineering. I'm not doing this anymore. I hate this class,’ but [that experience] really just taught me to just keep going and it’ll be fine, but you have to work hard to get there,” Mercer said.