MSU engineering student selected as ASCE Scholarship recipient

STARKVILLE, Miss.— A Mississippi State University civil engineering student was awarded the 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers Mississippi Section Student Scholarship.

Abigail Musser, a December 2021 graduate of the Richard A. Rula School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was one of two recipients of the ASCE scholarship in Mississippi. The scholarship awards $750 to support higher learning in the field of civil engineering. Scholarship recipients are selected based on academic performance, awards, extracurriculars, need and a written essay on the topic of COVID-19.

“The essay was about how the engineering profession should react or respond to the COVID pandemic,” Musser said. “I was fortunate enough to be one of two winners of that scholarship.”

ASCE is a national society with a chapter at Mississippi State. Musser was a member of the organization as an undergraduate and noted that she enjoyed connecting with classmates at the ASCE meetings.

Musser, a Starkville native and daughter of two MSU professors, joins a long list of past Mississippi State students who have been the recipients of this scholarship. In 2020-2021, the sole recipient of the scholarship was MSU student Jessica Lewis. Over the past ten years, 22 Mississippi section ASCE scholarship winners have been Mississippi State students.

“I would encourage students to apply to any scholarship that they see that they are eligible for because they're so helpful and it's free money that people want to give you. They want to see you succeed and they want to help you through college,” Musser said. “Taking advantage of any opportunity like that, especially this ASCE scholarship, is always a good thing.”

Musser now works for Neel-Schaffer as a hydrology and hydraulics engineer and credits the diligence of MSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in letting students know about opportunities for job offers, internships or scholarships.

“I'll say the civil engineering department at Mississippi State is very good at letting their students know about opportunities,” Musser said. “They were always feeding us these opportunities and making sure that if there was a position open that suited us, or a scholarship that we would be likely to get, they were always putting that out there and sending us emails about it.”

The Bagley College of Engineering is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube at @msuengineering.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.

By Emily Cambre