Pre-engineering student Caroline Schott wins Breaking Traditions Award

Although gains have been made over time, engineering still is a profession where men tend to dominate, with less than 25 percent of women represented in its ranks.

It's a fact Caroline Schott has confronted in her young life.

Schott, who just graduated from Notre Dame Regional High School, recently won the State Breaking Traditions Secondary Award for being an outstanding Project Lead the Way pre-engineering student at Cape Girardeau's Career and Technology Center.

"I was the only girl out of six of us (in the program)," she said.

While many of the young women who take CTC courses focus on business or marketing, Schott said she chose the road less taken.

Caroline Schott talks Tuesday with Nicole Gharbawi, a construction inspector with the Missouri Department of Transportation, at the construction site of the Jackson roundabout.Glenn Landberg

"I'm not a business person. I'm not an English person. I really love math and science," she said.

Gaining acceptance from her peers in the pre-engineering program was an uphill battle at times, however.

Schott said her male counterparts often didn't take her seriously. Over the course of the two-year program, it took them a long time to realize she could do just as much as they could and had solid thoughts to contribute.

"I had to kind of like anchor down," she said. "I almost didn't do the second semester."

As Schott prepares to study civil engineering at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, she also is participating in an internship through the Missouri Department of Transportation, because she's always been fascinated with roads and bridges.

Caroline Schott, an intern with the Missouri Department of Transportation, poses for a photo Tuesday at the construction site of the Jackson roundabout.Glenn Landberg

"What makes them stay up?" she said. "Why don't they just fall down?"

One of the recent projects Schott has been involved in is the $1.5 million roundabout being built in Uptown Jackson to replace a four-way stop at East Main Street and U.S. 61.

She also has been working at a bridge construction site in Patton, Missouri.

Most of what her crew does is respond to complaints when not on active job sites. But during a recent project, the crew ran a test on concrete to ensure one of the workers hadn't hit a subterranean fuel tank.

It turned out what the man hit was "just a bunch of pipes tossed together," Schott said.

Caroline Schott, an intern with the Missouri Department of Transportation, poses for a photo Tuesday at the construction site of the Jackson roundabout.Glenn Landberg

Once the pipes were removed, it was back to business as usual.

ljones@semissourian.com

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