This past May, Nora Abdelaziz (packaging engineering) moved her tassel from right to left and joined her sisters Alexa (BS’13, materials science and engineering), Sarah (BS’17, industrial engineering), and Maya (BS’24, biomedical engineering) as an alumna of Rutgers School of Engineering (SoE).
“One of the biggest benefits of SoE is you can really find your niche here,” said Nora. “Maya loved biomedical engineering. I fell in love with packaging after thinking I wanted mechanical engineering. I think it’s so beautiful that everyone can find their passion.”
It was the school’s strong and diverse engineering program, proximity to the family’s New Jersey home, and extracurricular opportunities that prompted eldest sister Alexa to begin the family’s SoE tradition. “Here,” she said, “I was able to get that big-campus energy while still feeling part of a smaller, close-knit engineering community.”
That classroom community extends beyond academics. “Some of my favorite Rutgers memories are with the people I had around me,” said Sarah. “Field hockey, Phi Sigma Rho, Engineering Student Ambassador, cheering on our Scarlet Knights at football games—it was the perfect balance of social events and academic focus.”
At SoE, Nora, Maya, and Sarah gained the confidence to seek out internships, which led to full-time jobs: Nora at Hatteras, a printing, packaging, and fulfillment services company; Maya at Johnson & Johnson; and Sarah at Amazon. Alexa, who went on to earn her Ph.D. in nutritional and metabolic biology from Columbia University, is at Unilever. Nora credits SoE with giving her “an amazing set of experiences that allowed me to really broaden my horizons.”
The sisters’ parents, Sandy and Fuad Abdelaziz, could not be happier with how their daughters blossomed at SoE. “It is a great accomplishment to earn an engineering degree, and they can never take it away from you,” said Sandy. “It shows you are a problem solver and logical thinker.” For the Abdelaziz sisters, that problem-solving mindset—and the community they found at Rutgers SoE—runs in the family.
