Cullen College of Engineering’s most recent Outstanding Junior, industrial engineering undergraduate Reagan Kimberly, sees the power in being not only a successful woman in engineering, but in being exactly where she’s meant to be.
Kimberly first enrolled as a mechanical engineering student but shortly changed her major to industrial engineering once the opportunity arose.
“I didn’t feel like I was in the right major at that point — it just didn’t feel like the thing that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and that’s okay,” she said. “I felt like IE was just my home, you know? I love looking at systems from a broader point of view, and I’m a big math person, too. Industrial engineering has a lot of math, which is nice, as well as a lot of pathways I can grow into later.”
Kimberly was recently honored with the Outstanding Junior award for both the industrial engineering department and the college overall, by which she said she was “blown away.”
“I didn’t think that was possible, and I think it’s really cool to be a woman in industrial engineering and being able to accomplish all of these things. I think it’s really powerful. I also think it’s pretty great for an industrial engineer to get that award, because we’re a smaller major, so I’m happy to be representing my department in that way,” said Kimberly.
“I also like to do a lot with mentorship opportunities, so I think it’s great to see myself accomplishing these things to hopefully inspire younger people as well.”
Kimberly currently serves as a Cullen College Recruitment Ambassador, and is the on-campus recruitment manager for the program itself.
“It’s been a great opportunity, and I’ve made such great friends there,” she said. “Our program director Andres Acosta is amazing, and we recently found out that we helped contribute to a 30% enrollment increase year over year. That’s a really cool thing to be a part of.”
Kimberly also participated in 2025’s UH Day at the Texas State Capitol last February. She was one of six students representing Cullen College alongside a larger University of Houston delegation, advocating for increased funding and further support from the state for the university.
“It was a great honor to get to represent Cullen College and UH as a whole. I remember standing in the rotunda of the state capitol with the Mariachi Pumas playing and Shasta there, with everybody wearing Cougar Red — it was a really powerful moment. I have so much pride for UH and everything we do, so being able to represent us on that level was a fantastic opportunity,” Kimberly added.
Making strong connections with many unfamiliar faces is nothing new to Kimberly; in fact, she’s old hat at it after spending several high school years playing drums in a local band she started.
“We actually toured the West Coast when I was fifteen, and I did it for a long time — through high school, I’d play gigs on the weekend in the middle of school. After COVID it was a bit harder to do music like that, and obviously now my life is more centered around my engineering degree and school, but it’s still a very fun thing for me to talk about. I love playing music,” she said.
This summer, she’ll be interning with an accounting firm alongside a dedicated team of industrial engineers whose responsibilities include economic valuations for tangibles, which she considers “still a very engineer-minded gig” given that engineering and accounting don’t immediately seem to go hand-in-hand. But given her aptitude and affection for numbers — including fighting the “bad rap” she sees mathematics get sometimes — and her possible interest in earning her MBA after her bachelor’s degree, Reagan Kimberly appears to be right where she belongs: on the path to success.