From Stingray to engineer

Anna Stevens presenting her senior engineering project to an attendee at the CU Boulder Engineering Expo earlier this year.

Anna Stevens has always been one for a challenge, a trait fostered by summers spent on the Village Stingrays swim team and by carving her own path in the male-dominated field of engineering.

Anna’s family moved to The Village at Castle Pines in 2011, when she was in second grade. She began attending Buffalo Ridge Elementary before transferring to American Academy – Castle Pines (AA). During these early years in a new neighborhood, the Stingrays helped Anna meet new friends: “I was a part of the community,” Anna reflected. Such community was also found at the yearly Halloween pancake breakfast and during summer days spent enjoying wildlife with friends.

It was in her seventh-grade year at AA when Anna found her true passion: engineering. In a STEM class, Anna learned to program Arduino while building battle robots with classmates. (Arduino is a commonly used hardware board for simple coding language.) This newfound passion continued into Anna’s time at Rock Canyon High School, where she took engineering classes and expanded her understanding of code. By her senior year, Anna was set on going to college to study engineering, where she could continue to hone her enjoyment of hands-on creative work with math and science, while also challenging gender conventions. “Especially since most engineering fields are overtaken by men, I wanted to somehow challenge the stereotypes,” she said.

At CU Boulder, Anna found her footing and joined the Society of Women Engineers. In her senior year, Anna worked on a design project with classmates to create a prototype of a Body Worn Counter Unmanned Aircraft System, a backpack that can shoot down drones using AI tracking. Within the student team, Anna was the group’s system engineer, interacting with their client while testing system functions. The team went on to present their prototype at the CU Engineering Expo, a highlight of Anna’s collegiate career.

Anna’s university days were not just spent hard at work in the engineering labs. She also studied abroad at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where she found new hobbies in the school’s fencing and hiking clubs, all while making new friends from all over the globe.

Now, with her bachelors of science in mechanical engineering cum laude, Anna is excited to see where her passions take her. She is interested in exploring aerospace fields, with a focus on manufacturing. When asked what advice she would give girls interested in engineering, Anna remarked, “I would say make sure you really advocate for yourself. Don’t quiet down during meetings; you belong there.”