This is a guest blog entry about Jacqueline Miller written by Satwika Vemuri.

I met Jackie the very first day I arrived at USC! She was one of my 7 suitemates and someone I grew closer to over freshman year because of our suite’s infamous couch time chats. It’s interesting to hear her perspective on Environmental Engineering (ENE) because of her passion for the field as well as how different her experience in Viterbi is from mine. Here’s a little more about her!

Jackie is an Environmental Engineering Major who is also part of Chi Epsilon Honor Society, the American Society of Civil Engineers where she is part of the Environmental Design Team and Engineers Without Borders where she is part of the Bolivia Design Team. She is also part of undergraduate research under a PhD student who is taking part in wastewater epidemiology research.

Originally from Seattle, Jackie was surrounded by nature growing up. She learned more about environmental threats to nature in middle school and actively pursued her interest in this space during high school by being involved in her school’s environmental club and taking part in service projects. She saw environmental engineering as a unique approach to solving many of the environmental problems in the world today.

She was drawn to USC because of the tight-knit community and small class size that Viterbi Environmental Engineering offers. She also liked that undergraduate research was made accessible through her CE 110 class, where she was able to meet many of the ENE faculty members in her freshman year. This ultimately allowed her to pursue research opportunities that she is currently involved in!

“A lot of people are scared by the small size of this major but I honestly think it’s one of its biggest positive attributes.”

Jackie sees herself potentially getting a master’s degree related to the intersection of water and environmental engineering and then transitioning to industry to be involved in the real world impact of ENE. She encourages those who are considering this major to open their eyes to the variety of possibilities within environmental engineering!