Outnumbered by men, women graduates at Embry-Riddle embraced leadership roles at the school

When Evgeniia Egorova completed secondary school in Spain, her home since she was 10, she didn't know what to do next.

"I was very lost and worried about my future," she admits.

That all seems so long ago, as she graduates Monday from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida with a business administration degree, a resume packed with impressive experiences and a job with a promising road ahead.

She and other women student leaders will be among the 1,245 students graduating from the Daytona Beach campus. Embry-Riddle hosts two graduation ceremonies for undergraduates on Monday and a third for graduate students on Tuesday.

Of those students, 336 (about 27%) are women.

That's a major improvement since Lisa Kollar started as an Embry-Riddle student at the Prescott, Arizona, campus in 1988. She later did graduate work at the Daytona Beach campus, where she now serves as dean of students.

“We are starting to evolve and see lots of underrepresented populations go out into our aviation and aerospace industry and hold various leadership roles," she said. "So I think it’s changing and I think here at Embry-Riddle we do a great job in trying to help our students develop holistically in and outside of the classroom."

Evgeniia's story: Getting outside 'comfort zone'

Russia-born Egorova said her plan to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida came together "by accident," talking with a neighbor, who happened to work in aviation.

"He told me that it was a really cool school and that he would’ve loved to attend it back in the day," she said in an email. "Then I looked at pictures of the student union."

Because she was applying for college during the pandemic, she couldn't visit. But pictures of the iconic "mother ship," the Mori Hosseini Student Union, built for $75 million and completed in 2018, sold her.

She arrived without the kind of passion so many ERAU students feel for aviation and aeronautics. She chose business as a major.

One thing that helped: Univ101, a 10-week, required student-success course for all incoming freshmen. Many colleges and universities require incoming students to take student success courses to help them navigate college.

Kollar said one of the aims of Univ101 is to encourage students to get involved with some of the more than 300 student organizations.

"We strongly encourage from the day they come through orientation, we encourage them to get engaged: To find those groups that help feed their passion but also help them develop as a person," Kollar said.

Egorova took that advice seriously.

"I learned that if I wanted to succeed I had to get out of my comfort zone and push to network, build a community, and grow my experience in any way I could," Egorova said.

She joined the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers and became social chair and later, president.

That led to other campus activities. She joined the Student Government Association and became president. She was also co-president of her senior class council.

"I realized that I enjoyed being a leader and wanted to be better at it," Egorova said. "I also knew that I needed an internship to succeed after graduation, and thankfully through the power of networking and relationship building, I was able to get one (as a project coordinator) with Cummins, Inc."

Esha Doshi found inspiration from above

Esha Doshi is a serious student with an exceptional record of academic achievement and leadership that gives her every reason to be confident.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering last year. This year, as she earns her MBA, she will serve as the school’s first graduate student to deliver a commencement address.

And if you ask what top-line lesson she takes from her five years, it’s humility.

“My biggest takeaway in my pursuit of higher education was that you will never be the smartest person in the room. There are many people around you that have something unique to offer and it’s up to us to look for the good in people,” Doshi said in an email. “At the end of the day, it’s the relationships that you foster that help you get through the challenges of rocket science.”

Doshi − who is from San Diego, where she was the first person in Rancho Bernardo High School history to graduate in three years − was attracted to ERAU because of an interest in aviation. She found inspiration from the school's location, abutting Daytona Beach International Airport.

"Being able to see the planes fly over me every day truly propelled me to keep going knowing that there was light at the end of the tunnel," Doshi said. "It was a tough journey, but seeing what you will be working on flying overhead is a truly remarkable experience."

Managing the relationship between failure and success

Kaley Eaton, who graduates with an engineering physics degree in the spacecraft instrumentation track, arrived at ERAU as a first-generation college student, but one who had a 4.0 high school grade-point average who didn’t have to study for exams and typically finished homework in 30 minutes.

She got involved right away, joining the Student Government Association, the Society for Women Engineers, the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority and performed on the track team as a heptathlete.

In her sophomore year, that all changed. She scored a 15% on one exam and ended up dropping some courses. She earned Cs in others.

“I felt like an absolute failure, and thought all my goals were unachievable,” she said in an email. “I honestly was considering if college was even for me.”

Despite that, she was able to land an internship with a private contractor working with NASA – one of her main goals.

By her senior year, she was her student class president headed for a position as a software engineer at Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado.

“It’s OK to fail/not succeed all the time,” Eaton said. “Use the failures as learning experiences and let them be a guiding light in your path.”

More on women achievers

Doshi said when she got to ERAU, it didn't take long to notice the nearly 3-to-1 male-female student ratio.

"I realized that I may have to work harder to ensure my voice was heard," she said. "I know most women at Embry-Riddle are not only talented but also work very hard to get to where they are today."

Doshi believes it was perseverance and grit − not gender − that helped them rise above the crowd.

"With that being said, I know plenty of brilliant males who have also worked just as hard and are prominent student leaders on campus," she said.

Kollar, the dean, said Egorova, Doshi and Eaton are prime examples of students who followed the advice on getting involved in student organizations and forging relationships to help tap their potential.

"They just are not going to accept the glass ceiling for women. They are ready to go out and push that glass ceiling, and I am just so excited," Kollar said. "Seeing the percentage of women increasing from the time I started ... to now is really exciting. ... We have really come a long way and to be a part of that is such an honor.”

Eaton said women students still face hurdles.

"There have been many times where I am the only female in my engineering classes, and where males in the engineering field have said that I wouldn’t be successful," she said. "I make sure to use their 'critiques' and words as fuel for my fire to make me accomplish things that they didn’t think I could, to prove them wrong."

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This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: ERAU commencement: Exceptional women grads share insights to success