It’s safe to say that hanging out in her two grandfathers’ workshops as a toddler left a big impression on Taylor Hosick.
One grandfather was a welder and the other a carpenter. She would glue blocks together or retrieve tools for them while her grandfathers invented and tinkered in front of her.
“I didn’t realize that it wasn’t super normal for a female to be in those types of areas until middle school shop class,” Hosick, a sophomore from Kearney, Nebraska, said. “I was one of the only people who knew what they were doing and remember thinking, ‘Is not everyone brought up this way?’”
Now, as a member of the inaugural Kiewit Scholars Program cohort in the College of Engineering, Hosick’s upbringing — and pursuit of her passions — has paid off in a big way.
Currently in its second year, the Kiewit Scholars Program offers full scholarships, advanced curriculum, internship opportunities and mentorship from executives in the Kiewit Corporation to a select group of students.
For Hosick, the unprecedented access to Kiewit executives has already made a big impression.
“They give us lectures on a bi-weekly basis, but they’ll also shoot us an email or message on Teams to check in and see how the program is going,” Hosick said. “I really wasn’t expecting that. They want us to succeed and make sure that when we go out into the industry, we’re prepared.”
Much of that preparedness comes from trips to job sites in Nebraska, Colorado and beyond, and from summer internships around the country.
Hosick spent her last summer interning as a field engineer at Kiewit’s Riverfront Revitalization Project in Omaha.
“On the office side of things, I ordered supplies, logged hours and made sure blueprints were up to spec, but I was also helping manage a crew of 4 to 5 people in the field,” Hosick said.
She also got to see the first and last piece of a pedestrian bridge installed over the course of the summer.
“Looking at the progress we made on the project over the summer was insane,” Hosick said. “It was just all just an amazing, amazing experience.”
