Nicole Delaney graduated from Blackduck Senior High School with a perfect 4.0 GPA.  When she arrived at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology as a freshman in the chemical engineering program, she expected that she was in for an easy degree…until the professor reminded them that grading was on a curve.

“Look around you,” the professor told them.  “Half of the students sitting next to you are going to get Cs.  They have never gotten a C in their entire lives.” For a student so confident in her ability to make perfect grades in high school, Nicole now says that getting a B is quite an accomplishment in itself. 

“Getting a B is great because you have to beat out 80 of the 150 kids in class for it,” she explained.  “The first year is difficult and you start questioning why you’re there, what you’re doing and why you decided to do this in the first place.”

Then, Nicole remembers picking her college major from a book while sitting in physics class her senior year of high school shortly after being accepted at the Institute of Technology and after being awarded the Alworth Scholarship.

“I knew that engineering involved problem solving and I like to problem solve. So I thought, in engineering with a focus on chemical engineering, I could do that. I thought if I didn’t like it I could change after the first year. I guess they haven’t scared me away yet,” she joked.

Not only has it not scared her away from engineering, the engineering program and the college experience has emboldened Nicole to enthusiastically pursue every opportunity to learn more and do more as it came her way.  During her freshman year, the University of Kansas invited her to apply for a summer undergraduate research grant from the National Science Foundation.  Although sophomore applicants were preferred, Nicole thought she had nothing to lose and sent in her application.  She was accepted and suddenly her plans to go home for the summer to hang out with friends were changed.  She just couldn’t turn down the experience.  She got to investigate alternative fuel technologies by conversion of biomass.

"I told myself at the beginning of the summer that it was my out,” she recalled. “If by the end I couldn’t see myself doing this type of research and being happy doing it for the rest of my life, I was going to switch my major. I gave myself the summer to ask as many questions as possible and to find out as much as I could.”

Delaney and twenty-five other students at various academic levels from chemistry related programs around the country lived and worked together for the summer at the University of Kansas, creating a specific catalyst to transform sunflower and soybean oil into fuel.  That summer program became an integral part of Nicole’s ability to deal effectively with the challenges of a rigorous academic program. 

“You realize that you can do it yourself and not sleep, eat, or do anything else or you can work with your classmates,” she explained.

Nicole’s career path is filled with a multitude of possibilities that gives her pause reflection. “I have learned that engineering isn't all about the end mass of knowledge acquired,” she said, “it is also about forging teams and networks of classmates, learning your strengths as well as your weaknesses, and coming to terms with yourself along the way.”