Hello ENGI 210!! I am Zekiye, a junior from Will Rice College studying Mechanical Engineering. I love love love being involved with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at Rice. We have a lot of fun social events, and great opportunities, like the time the Aston Martin F1 team took us out to tour the Austin Grand Prix !! I was also an O-Week advisor this past fall, where I was blessed with the best O-Week family ever! Fun fact, this was actually my first O-Week with Will Rice since I transferred from Baker College my sophomore year (still love Baker though <3).

Image 1. Me from SWE x Aston Martin F1 Team Trip 🙂

This past fall semester, I had the pleasure of taking ENGI 120, where my team and I made an accessible fabric storage system. Our project was to tackle the fabric storage system our client, HTX Sewn Goods, was facing. Our final solution design was a two-shaft carousel system, holding 5 fabric rolls on each shaft that would rotate to desired heights to be transported onto a cutting table. Although we could only build a 1/4 scale prototype of our full model, having all the mechanical and electrical components work together as they were intended to was super fulfilling!

Image 2. 1/4 Scale Fabric Storage System

Through this course, I hope to improve my woodworking skills. I previously took a sculpting class where we learned the basics of everything in a woodshop, but I didn’t gain as much technical skills as I would have wanted. I hope I can make enough improvement to where I will be able to build a vintage bookshelf for myself in the future.

I am so excited for the sewing segment of this course, I can’t wait to start on our aprons. I have never had much of an interest in sewing, but everyone in my family is so skilled with making/altering clothes, that I feel like I’m falling behind. Plus having the skills to make something out of scratch seems useful enough!