The BSCES Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was honored to review the applications and lead the section process for the 2026 Professor Peter S. Eagleson Memorial Scholarship, which was presented as part of the 177th Annual Awards Dinner held on June 11, 2026. The intent of the scholarship is to provide aid to those that come from backgrounds that are under-represented in the civil engineering profession. This scholarship is for the benefit of BSCES Student Members who are enrolled in an undergraduate civil engineering program at a Massachusetts college or university. The scholarship has a value of $20,000. The members of the selection committee are Merve Iplikcioglu Kirtan from Steere Engineering, Ryan Gordon from Nitsch Engineering, and Reed Brockman from AECOM.
The members of the DE&I committee were so impressed by the applications and interviews they had with these students, that they asked the Board of Government if they could make additional funds available through the BSCES Student Scholarship Fund to acknowledge the four runners up, as well as invite them to the awards dinner. The Board agreed, and we awarded each with $500 scholarships:
Wonuola Abiodun, who just graduated from MIT
Fadilat Amisu, a junior at UMass Lowell
Camille Bacon, a senior at Northeastern
And Emily Wu, a senior at Northeastern
Fadilat, Camille, and Emily were able to attend. Wonu was unable to attend as she was attending an educational program overseas.
Finally, the recipient of the 2026 Professor Peter S. Eagleson Memorial Scholarship is Annabelle Magill.
Annabelle is a rising junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is a member of WPI’s ASCE Student Chapter and their concrete canoe team, the treasurer of WPI’s running club, and member of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
Annabelle has been on the dean’s list every semester and currently has a 3.8 GPA. She also works on campus and full-time during the summers to contribute to the cost of her education.
Her senior year of high school, Annabelle reached out to Judy Nitsch, a WPI alum and former BSCES President well known to many in the BSCES community. Judy encouraged Annabelle to find what she was passionate about in engineering and pursue it. Last summer, after her hometown of Oakham, MA was looking at building a 180 Megawatt battery energy storage system, Annabelle learned about the safety hazards, including potential fires, the system would bring. This propelled her decision to take her knowledge from her structural engineering discipline and use it to advance the energy and storage system sector of energy infrastructure safety with fire protection engineering.
This summer Annabelle worked at Jensen Hughes as a fire protection engineer intern.
The DE&I committee is working to make this scholarship part of a bigger program, and has been matching up the recipients with career mentors. In addition, the BSCES Public Awareness & Outreach Committee has been working with the recipients to get them involved in K-12 STEM outreach activities. As the theme of Future Cities this year focuses on controlling urban wildfires, there is a natural role ready for Annabelle!
Congratulations Annabelle, Wonu, Camille, Emily and Fadilat!
Anyone wishing to get involved with the BSCES Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion can contact [email protected]. Meetings are the second Friday of each month at noon.