Student and alumni award winners

Recent graduate bringing research experience to MIT grad program

Autumn Deitrick sought out undergraduate research opportunities not long after arriving at Penn State. Conducting that research earned her national recognition while also giving her a better understanding of the research process itself. “You want to keep moving forward, but sometimes you have to move backward, sideways,” she said. “It’s taught me to have a lot of tenacity and not give up and to be OK with things not working out as soon as I’d like them to or as smoothly as I’d like them to.”

After graduating with honors in civil engineering this May, Deitrick began work toward her doctoral degree in applied ocean science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) — Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program. She will start classes this fall, but this summer, she has been working in the Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Lab with MIT Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Heidi Nepf, studying how mangrove trees may mitigate climate change by trapping carbon- rich sediment with their roots — often at double the rate of terrestrial ecosystems. “They’re an important species that a lot of coastal cities are now interested in restoring and figuring out how much carbon can they actually contain for climate change purposes,” Deitrick said.

At Penn State, Deitrick spent time in Dr. Xiaofeng Liu’s Environmental Fluid Dynamics Group and Dr. Caitlin Grady’s Food Energy Water Nexus (FEWs) Lab. She was honored with a Barry Goldwater Scholarship in 2020 in part for her research with Liu on predicting attraction flow for nature-like fish passages which help aquatic life complete their migratory

journeys. Her interest in ocean-related research began to pique when she attended and presented research at the MIT Water Summit in 2019 and met students in the MIT-Woods Hole Joint Program. She will co-direct the upcoming Water Summit in November. “I realized I liked these coastal ecosystems,” Deitrick said, “and over time I gained confidence and realized this is what I wanted to challenge myself to do in graduate school. I’m already really enjoying my work.” Deitrick, who was a learning assistant for CE 360: Fluid Mechanics and a facilitator for the Women in Engineering program for EMCH 212: Dynamics, said she gained the confidence to take challenging courses from the honors classes she took during her first two years and that she was inspired by watching her professors convey difficult material. She hopes to become a professor herself. “It’s really astounding how much I’ve learned at Penn State,” she said. “I’m really grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve had at Schreyer to set me up to do what I’m doing now.”

Student entrepreneur grows clothing business in midst of pandemic

Austin Thomas had a promising startup business and a new brand gaining traction. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. The Smeal College of Business student and Schreyer Scholar was forced to adapt, and the way he did kept that brand’s momentum and set the foundation for his honors thesis.

Thomas is the creator of JERPA Jeans (jerpajeans.com), which are lined with Sherpa fleece but lack the bulk of flannel or similar liners. Inspired by friends tailgating at football games in cold weather, Thomas set out to create a pair of jeans that was both warm and fashionable and, after several months of product testing, launched the company. “I don’t really like to just come up with something and then sit around and let it happen elsewhere or not go through with it,” he said. Thomas, a supply chain and information systems major, used the money he had earned from a summer internship with Campbell’s Soup to purchase his initial product and kept costs low by using a sold-out launch model. He would order small quantities of product, promote them on social media, then announce that those products wouldn’t be available again until the next cycle. “If you order 500 and the demand’s only 200, now you’re left with 300 in inventory which you don’t know what to do with,” said Thomas, who often slept on his couch because stacks of jeans were occupying his bed. Thomas had more than 100 students from Penn State and nearly two dozen other universities working as “ambassadors,” who received commissions determined by their level of involvement, helping him with both. By the time JERPA Jeans competed with six other student startups for a share of $30,000 on WPSU’s Shark Tank-style TV show, “The Investment,” this May, the company’s revenue had surpassed $84,000. “The fact that his supply line was disrupted … I don’t think that fazed him much,” said Penn State Associate Professor of Supply Chain and Information Systems Robert Novack. Novack, Thomas’ thesis supervisor, encouraged him to use his experience with JERPA in his honors thesis. “Talk about how you chose the product, the demographic you’re after, how you decided on sourcing, how you got around tariffs, transportation costs,” Novack said. “So someone can pick up his thesis and say, ‘I can start a business now. I know all of the details and all of the pitfalls.’” Thomas graduated in May and will pursue a master’s in real estate degree in the Smeal College of Business this year. The lessons he has learned about small businesses, supply chains, marketing and more have reinforced his belief that success is not a solo endeavor. “I’ve always been a team player,” Thomas said. “I’ve seen it through my internships — supply chain is very team-oriented. You’re working with teams, with suppliers. There’s a lot of people interaction. “Being able to work with people is something I always want to do.”