SME Scholarship Helps Michigan Student Attend School in ‘Favorite Place Ever’

Winning the 2022 SME Education Foundation Family Scholarship — for $10,000 a year over four years — helped Carsyn Boggio realize her dream of attending Michigan Technological University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

“It made coming up here easier,” says Boggio, 18, who graduated from Romeo High School in suburban Detroit and is now majoring in mechanical engineering at Michigan Tech. “I was going to come up here no matter what, but I felt a lot better having that behind me. It’s been a little motivator in the back of my mind, like, ‘there’s people paying for you to be here, you have to do well now.’ And I think that’s good.”

Boggio’s passion for the U.P. was stoked during frequent childhood camping trips to the area. “My dad grew up in the U.P., and it’s my favorite place ever,” she says. “Whenever we came up here I was so excited, and when I got into engineering Michigan Tech was a no-brainer for me. It was like, this is a combination of everything I love.”

Boggio initially became interested in an engineering career when she joined the robotics club in her sophomore year of high school. “I fell in love with it really quick,” she says. “There were a lot of things I had to learn, but once I started I realized that it’s a very rewarding field.”

Once Boggio’s interest in engineering was apparent, her father — a teacher at her high school, which is an SME PRIME school — encouraged her to apply for an SME scholarship. “There were two essays, I had to do two videos, and then I had a final in-person interview,” she recalls, adding that the scholarship committee allowed her to participate in the interview online since she was attending the FIRST robotics championship in Houston at the time.

As far as her future plans, Boggio says, “I don’t really have a specific career I’m dead set on. I’m still trying to learn as much as I can, make as many connections as I can, and see where my education takes me.” With the help of her SME scholarship, Boggio is positioned to do just that.