O-H, the places they'll go!

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On May 8, 2022, the college welcomed approximately 1,700 new alumni into the Buckeye engineering family. Meet civil engineering student Sophie Jaques and five other members of the class of 2022 who combined their passions with The Ohio State University’s offerings to engineer a transformative education.


Sophie Jaques
Award winning defenseman Sophie Jaques celebrates after the Ohio State women's hockey team won its first NCAA championship.

After one campus visit, Canadian and ice hockey defenseman Sophie Jaques knew she wanted to be a Buckeye.

“It was the culture and the people—I fell in love with the school and everything about it,” said Jaques who is from Toronto, Ontario. “Knowing the school was great for both academics and athletics made me want to come here even more.”

The talented student-athlete excels as both a defenseman on the Ohio State women’s hockey team and as a civil engineering major. She is the 2022 Arthur Ashe Jr. Female Sports Scholar of the year, which honors young, outstanding minority men and women who have distinguished themselves in their academic and athletic pursuits. Chosen from over 1,000 nominations, Jaques is Ohio State’s first winner of the overall award and earned the individual Sport Scholar award for women’s hockey.

Jaques had a recording-breaking senior season for the Ohio State women’s hockey team, which won its first NCAA championship this year. She earned a Buckeye defenseman single-season record 59 points and led the team with 38 assists. Among her litany of awards, Jaques was named the Western Collegiate Hockey Association’s Outstanding Student-Athlete of the Year and became Ohio State’s first top-three finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, presented annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s ice hockey.

She also serves as the co-vice president for the registered student-athlete organization SHEROS, which focuses on women within the BIPOC Buckeye student-athlete community.

Jaques is equally dedicated to her academic endeavors. She has been an undergraduate teaching assistant for the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering for the past two years and was an engineering intern at American Electric Power. She is also a research assistant in the Campus Transit Lab, where she analyzes bus and traffic data. That experience piqued her interest in furthering her civil engineering studies.

“The research we're doing is really cool and it's been really interesting to see the real-world application,” said Jaques, who earned a fellowship for graduate studies at Ohio State. “I'm planning to further it with my graduate studies, so I think it's been really helpful for my future.” Jaques is equally proud of her accomplishments on and off the ice.

“Athletically, winning the national championship had been the goal for four years and to accomplish that was something I'll never forget,” she explained. “Academically, getting the degree and having that background to set me up for the future is what I'm most proud of.”

While pursuing her master’s in civil engineering, Jaques will also return to the rink next year to play her final year of eligibility as a Buckeye. Ultimately, she plans to become a certified professional engineer and work in the transportation industry, though she hasn’t ruled out pursuing a pro hockey career.


Read more about other outstanding College of Engineering graduates, including Matt Parsons, a chemical engineering major, who played an integral role in Ohio State's Sustainable Resilient Communities project, and Tatum Wilmes, another chemical engineering graduate, who, in addition to her academic and co-op pursuits, served CEGE students, faculty and staff as an assistant in the department's Academic Advising office.

The students featured in this article were nominated by college leaders and advisors.

- by Candi Clevenger, College of Engineering Communications, clevenger.87@osu.edu

 

Category: Students