Choose to Challenge: Daria Kotys-Schwartz
Daria Kotys-Schwartz’s engineering story started when she was incredibly young. Her parents were first-generation Americans who were big on education and taught her that she could be whatever she wanted to be.
As one of three girls, she never felt there were gender-specific societal roles placed on her by her family, which helped instill that sense that she could do anything. She has “amazing memories of being in the plant with my father watching steel being made around 8 or 9.”
Highlights
- Inspired as a child by watching father at steel plant
- Earned undergraduate degree from Ohio State
- Worked in manufacturing before returning to academia
- Currently teaching professor, director of Idea Forge
- Encourages students to be authentic, follow own path
When it came to college, she knew she needed to make a decision between history or engineering. Through the process of elimination, by understanding there wasn’t much she could do with a history degree, she went for engineering. She bounced around the engineering disciplines a bit until she fell into mechanical engineering and got to work at the engine lab.
Even through this time, she still thought about leaving engineering two other times because the classes were not something she enjoyed. However, through it all, she stuck with engineering because she loved doing the work of a practicing engineer. This experience and a lot of 2 a.m. phone calls to her parents helped her get to the end with an undergraduate degree from Ohio State.
Directly after, she worked in industry doing manufacturing at a fascinating place, but realized it wasn’t the path she wanted. She was on track to be a CEO by the time she was 30, but after three years of this lifestyle she knew it wouldn’t make her happy. Shortly after, she returned to school for her master’s degree. When she called her parents to tell them, she said, “I didn’t know why, I couldn't tell them why, but knew it was the right thing to do.”
During her time getting her master’s degree, she had an opportunity arise where she was offered to help co-teach with one of her mentors. She fell into this teaching position and quickly realized she was hooked.
“Within day three, maybe day four, I had an absolute natural high being in a classroom,” she said. “This was something I’ve never experienced before. I’ve never been good at putting words to it but describe it as drinking too much coffee.”
At the beginning, she even thought it was just coffee. When she still felt this way after having no coffee that day, she realized it was a natural chemical high.
Shortly after, her mentors asked if she had considered doing her PhD ,and she was hooked. She knew she wanted to teach college.
Her advice to her younger self would be to “be authentic; don’t believe everyone saying who you’re supposed to be but know that you can lead authentically, teach authentically.” She shares this advice with others often by telling them their teaching should reflect who they are, rather than trying to teach like someone else.
She also would tell her younger self to be patient, and she had no idea how much more she had to learn as an entry-level engineer. She learned that it was OK to not know things. One hope she has for the future of engineering is for female students to realize how they can bring balance to engineering.
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