Engineering
May 1, 2017
Civil engineering graduate Ashley Martinez ’17 was awarded a prestigious Fulbright student grant and will be moving to Mexico City this Fall. While abroad, Martinez will be working with the Binational Business Internship program where she will intern with a local company and take graduate courses at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.
“I’ve known since I was a freshman that I wanted to apply to the Fulbright and achieve near-fluidity in Spanish,” Martinez said. “I’m hoping that ten months in Mexico, in both professional and high-level academic settings, will help me to really nail down the subtleties of the Spanish language.”
During her four years on campus, Martinez participated in Engineers Without Borders and also studied abroad in Chile. Along with her civil engineering degree, Martinez also got a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a minor in computer science. She credits the Shiley School of Engineering for preparing her for her future career.
“The civil engineering program trained me to become a strong writer and communicator,” Martinez said. “The ability to translate highly technical information into something more broadly understandable is a key skill that I honed during my time at UP.”
This summer, Martinez will be an intern at San Francisco’s Public Utility Commission where she will work on hydraulic modeling.
The United States Fulbright program began after World War II to “assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic and peaceful relations between the United States and other countries of the world” through the exchange of students, scholars and professionals. The program operates in more than 160 countries worldwide.
Since its establishment in 1946 by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given over 360,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, scientists and other professionals the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
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