The EngineerGirl Writing Contest has taken on many different topics and formats since it began in 2003.
Students wrote essays exploring the lifecycles of everyday items and the types of engineering involved along the way.
Read the 2024 winning entries
Students wrote essays about how female and/or non-white engineers have contributed to or can enhance engineering's great achievements.
Read the 2023 winning entries
Students wrote informative essays about how engineering can help humanity meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
Read the 2022 winning entries
Students wrote pieces that saluted engineering’s role in meeting and defeating the challenges presented by COVID-19.
Read the 2021 winning entries
Tell a story about a person learning to live on a new world while traveling through space.
Read the 2020 winning entries
We want to read more stories about women and girls saving the day with their wits, skill, and whatever resources they can find to solve the problem. We want stories that inspire EngineerGirl readers to think, “I want to be able to do that” or “I can do that.”
Read the 2019 winning entries
Every part of a community's infrastructure — from 9-1-1 emergency dispatch systems to wastewater treatment facilities to phone networks to parks and playgrounds — relies on some form of engineering.
Read the 2018 winning entries
Engineers affect everything about the way people live, so it is not surprising that they also have a big impact on the animal world. Environmental engineers, for example, are often tasked with evaluating projects in order to minimize negative effects on valuable animal species. In some cases, engineers have developed ingenious solutions to help animals and people share the planet.
Read the 2017 winning entries
Engineers often make challenging decisions that can sometimes affect thousands of people. To help them to make good decisions, many engineering organizations have created guidelines for professional behavior or "codes of ethics" that make public safety, health, and well-being, and environmental sustainability primary concerns for engineers.
Read the 2016 winning entries
Engineers are essential to the way we live. They help to keep us safe and healthy, make sure we have enough to eat, get us from one place to another, and they even shape the way we play. Consider your favorite sport, and then think about all the different kinds of technologies that are used in playing, scoring, or training for that sport.
Read the 2015 winning entries
In honor of the NAE’s 50th anniversary, we invite you to imagine how engineering might change our lives over the next 50 years, in one of the following areas: nutrition, health, communication, education, or transportation.
Read the 2014 winning entries
From complex robotic surgical suites that enable surgeons to operate on patients thousands of miles away to simple storage mechanisms for vaccines in the developing world, engineering and technology are central to the way we fight disease. Write an essay about how engineers are helping to fight one of the five diseases considered the leading causes of death throughout the world today.
Read the 2013 winning entries
Shopping at your local supermarket is a different experience today than it was even 50 years ago. Today the food we eat comes from around the world and is often already prepared in a wonderful variety of ways. Engineers are actively involved in every step of the process—they design the specialized machines used to plant and harvest crops and develop unique manufacturing processes to prepare, package, and transport foods in safe and secure ways.
Read the 2012 winning entries
Flood, famine, earthquake, tsunami, oil spill, blackout, building collapse, mining accident, wildfire, hurricane, tornado, terrorist attack—all have been headline news in recent years. Every disaster presents unique challenges and requires fast and decisive action to save lives and limit damages. Engineers are involved in designing many products specifically for use in disaster zones such as portable medical equipment, oil skimmers, or basic shelters.
Read the 2011 winning entries
Engineers think big and solve problems with whatever resources they have available so they would be great companions on a deserted island. Try this exercise to see if you can think like an engineer: During a field trip to a national wildlife refuge (or national forest), you and a friend get separated from the rest of the group and realize that you are totally lost...
Read the 2010 winning entries
Have you ever wondered what goes through an engineer’s mind when she is designing a new product? It takes creativity as well as attention to details and design requirements. Often engineers will use an object as an example and then make improvements for safety, function, or attractiveness. Sometimes a design works best when it is simple, and other times it requires complicated calculations. Try your hand at evaluating your own engineering product.
Read the 2009 winning entries
Energy! It fuels our cars, heats our homes, runs our computers and keeps the lights on. We use energy in almost everything we do, but if we aren’t careful there won’t be enough. Engineers have their work cut out for them. The world is counting on them to chart a course to a safe and clean energy future.
Read the 2008 winning entries
Think about what life will be like on earth in the next 100 years. What do you believe are the most critical human needs? How might engineers contribute to meeting these needs? These are Engineering’s Grand Challenges. Write about the Grand Challenge that you believe will lead to the most important breakthrough of the 21st century and the role that engineers will play in meeting that challenge and building our future.
Read the 2007 winning entries
In 500-1000 words tell us how you think engineers have and continue to improve the world. Focus your essay on one of the following topics: Engineering For Today What have engineers done to improve the quality of your life today? What in your world have engineers made possible? Engineering For Tomorrow What significant technologies will engineers develop by the year 2020? What problems will they solve?
See a list of the 2006 winners
Each year, thousands of dolphins die after beaching themselves, often in spite of efforts of volunteers working furiously to move them back out to sea. Imagine that a pod of dolphins has mysteriously come ashore and you are asked to help. Contestants were asked to devise a solution to this problem using design principles and processes from one or more fields of engineering, removing the dolphins from the beach and safely back into their home in the water.
See a list of the 2005 winners
The National Academy of Engineering and the EngineerGirl! website, in conjunction with the Invention Assembly (http://web.mit.edu/invent/assembly.html), are pleased to announce the winners of the Engineering is a Dream Career Essay Contest. (Read the contest details) Many bright students submitted essays to the contest and judges had a wonderful time reading them.
See a list of the 2004 winners
Students were asked to comment on one of the following: engineering’s greatest achievement, a great engineer from history, or the future of engineering.
See a list of the 2003 winners