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Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute to Award ScholarshipsPosted: Sep 7, 2023
Katerina Dietz and Simon Kroll will receive the Transportation Engineering Scholarships. The scholarship recognizes academic achievement and promotes the education of transportation students at NDSU. Funding for the $1,500 scholarships is provided by the Mountain-Plains Consortium, a group of eight universities led by the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at NDSU and funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation University Transportation Centers Program. Dietz, a senior from Mapleton, ND, is double majoring in Spanish and civil engineering. After graduating in the spring of 2024, she intends to work as a structural or transportation engineer in North Dakota and to eventually earn her professional engineer designation and become a project manager, coordinating and designing large-scale projects. Dietz is a member of the Society of Women Engineers, currently serving as vice president of corporate relations. She was previously the public relations lead for that group. She is also a member of Engineers without Borders, serving as finance lead from 2020 to 2021. She is a member of the Engineering Ambassadors and the Lions Club and was also a member of the Home Builders Association student chapter. Dietz has been on the NDSU Dean's List every semester since fall 2019 and has also received the FM Engineers Scholarship for 2023, the ND Association of County Engineers Scholarship for 2022, and the Home Builders Care Scholarship for 2021 and 2022. She worked as an after-school leader with the South East Education Cooperative from 2019 to 2022 and has been a civil engineering intern for Ulteig Engineering since 2022. Kroll is a senior in computer engineering from Royalton, MN. He expects to graduate in the spring of 2024 and plans to work in precision agriculture to develop and implement tools using innovations such as artificial intelligence to optimize grain transportation and help transportation infrastructure operate more efficiently. Kroll is a member of the Engineering Ambassadors, serving as a tour guide and small group speaker. He is a member of FarmHouse Fraternity, where he has been director of house operations and director of administration. He served as a group lead during NDSU Welcome Week and also participated in VEX Robotics, an educational robotics program that encourages creativity, teamwork, leadership, and problem solving. Kroll has been on the NDSU Dean's List every semester since fall 2020. He was named a Never Satisfied Scholar for 2022 by POET Biofuels and received the Hennepin Theater Trust Technical Excellence Award in 2020. He was a FarmHouse Fraternity International Power of 7 Seminar undergraduate participant earlier this year. Kroll worked for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a flight software development intern in 2021 and for Raven Industries as a software development intern in 2022. He is currently a software development intern with Bushel, a Fargo-based software company that provides technology solutions for farmers, grain buyers, ag retailers, protein producers, and food companies. Mateo Ramirez, a senior in civil engineering from Waconia, MN, will receive the Charles E. Herman Scholarship. The scholarship recognizes academic achievement and promotes the education of transportation students with a preference to women and minorities at NDSU. Funding for the $2,000 scholarship is provided by the Charles E. Herman Scholarship Endowment fund, NDSU Development Foundation. Ramirez expects to graduate in the spring of 2024 and plans to pursue a career working with railroads to improve rail infrastructure, particularly in North Dakota. He has been on the NDSU Steel Bridge Team since 2020, serving as treasurer, and has been on the NDSU Dean's List four times. He volunteered to install lake aeration in 2020 and served on the Waconia Varsity Football Leadership Council. Ramirez previously received the Vern E. Plath Endowed Scholarship for NDSU civil engineering students. He has been a student design assistant with the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute's Department of Transportation Support Center since early 2022. Hunter Neibauer, a junior in agricultural economics from Chinook, MT, will receive the Paul E.R. Abrahamson Scholarship. The scholarship recognizes outstanding students with an interest in the transportation and logistics of agricultural products. Funding for the $1,500 scholarship is provided by the Paul E.R. Abrahamson Transportation Scholarship Endowment Fund, NDSU Development Foundation. After graduating in 2024, Neibauer, plans to start his own commodity hauling business and eventually pursue a career in grain marketing. Neibauer has been named to the NDSU Dean's List four times and has been involved in the Agribusiness Club, the Agronomy Club, and Alpha Gamma Rho Fraternity. Before coming to NDSU, he volunteered at the Chinook Food Bank and the Sweet Home nursing facility in Chinook. For the past several years he has been involved in managing his family's farm and worked at the Hinebach Ranch near Chinook. He also worked for Glacier Snow Removal in West Fargo and as a harvest truck driver. Jerral Murray, a senior in agricultural and biosystems engineering from Bismarck, will receive the Tribal Transportation Scholarship. Murray is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and plans to pursue a career in engineering and land management in which she can oversee and care for tribal land and create opportunities for others. The scholarship recognizes outstanding Native American students at NDSU with an interest in transportation engineering, economics, or agriculture. Murray was a member of the Student Government Association at United Tribes Technical College (UTTC), serving as treasurer and secretary. She is also a member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, serving as vice president and president. Murray has been a scholar of the American Indian College Fund throughout her academic career at UTTC and NDSU. She participated in the First Nations Launch held by the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium and was one of two students selected to represent UTTC in Washington to inform members of Congress about tribal colleges and universities at the 2020 American Indian Higher Education Consortium Legislative Summit. Murray was a mentor and teaching assistant for summer students in the Advanced Synergistic Program for Indigenous Research in Engineering (ASPIRE) Academy and was a leader for the ASPIRE Camp, attended by indigenous high school students from across North Dakota in the summer of 2022. ASPIRE is a science, technology, mathematics, and engineering program at UTTC. She was on the President's List throughout her academic career at UTTC and is a professional member of the American Indian Society and Engineering Society. She was an intern with the Sandia National Laboratory and with the Department of Defense Army Research Laboratory. |
The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute will award five scholarships at its annual awards banquet October 12 to outstanding students at NDSU who have interests in transportation, agriculture, and logistics. More info available at the