Spring 2026 Honors College graduate and NAE Grand Challenge Scholar Ella Eger, who will be walking to receive her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a minor in energy and sustainability later this week, is a Houstonian through and through. With two Cougar parents — a mother who studied marketing in the C. T. Bauer College of Business and a father who studied music education in the Moores School of Music — choosing the University of Houston for her own education “felt very fitting.”
“I’ve been here my whole life,” she said.
When Eger’s family home was affected by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, she found flood resilience to be a topic of particular interest.
“I started out as a chemical engineering student in my very first semester, but I began to realize that I really wanted to work on things that I could see and touch with my hands, so chemical engineering no longer felt like the right fit for me. I wanted to learn more about how our built environment shapes us, so I moved to civil engineering.”
In looking for something to “really get [her] fired up,” Eger also participated in a study abroad experience to the Netherlands with a focus on coastal resiliency.
“My experience in the Netherlands expanded how I view my future as an engineer,” she said. “Dutch infrastructure transformed my relationship with resiliency from a technical interest to a personal obligation. After the Netherlands, I declared my minor in energy and sustainability, and I’ve since learned about all types of water studies through my engineering classes. That led me to want to keep learning more about how we interact with the water and how that fits into civil engineering.”
“My interdisciplinary work — the work I’ve done in my minor and how I’ve been able to broaden my perspective — is what I’m most proud of. There are a lot of nuances behind all this, and being able to confidently talk about my relationship with the environment through my classes has been something that I really appreciate.”
For the last two years, Eger has also served as the Operations Chair for the UH Ambassadors, overseeing communications and event management for a 40-member cohort while representing the student body to alumni, donors and university leadership.
“Unexpectedly, I was able to use this role as an extension of what I had learned in all my engineering and minor coursework,” she said. “UH Ambassadors deepened my understanding of sustainability by showing me how all systems within a university depend on intentional stewardship. Just as environmental systems create cycles of natural reciprocity, philanthropy creates cycles of investment in future generations. Seeing this parallel strengthened my belief that sustainable impact, in any context, requires shared responsibility and community engagement.”
This summer, Eger will be working in Galveston with Artist Boat to assist in the restoration of the Coastal Heritage Preserve. In the fall, she will begin pursuing her Master of Environmental Management at Duke University, where she is “ready to learn more beyond civil engineering, earn as many certifications as [she] can and do as much as possible while [she is] there.”
“My primary concentration is coastal and marine systems, so I’ll be attending classes at the Duke Marine Lab in my second year. I’ll get to live in the Outer Banks and do more intensive coastal work, but my specific niche of interest is environmental justice in coastal systems, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that overlaps with my engineering background.”
Eger also describes herself as being “very interested in environmental art and storytelling.”
“My formal introduction to this was actually in Ecologies of Being with Dr. Vollrath last semester, so it’s something I’ve become quite passionate about fairly recently,” Eger said. “In April, I went to Rice University to hear a talk from author Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I got my copy of Braiding Sweetgrass signed by her. Her ways of storytelling are huge inspirations for me. I think storytelling is something very important to know as a STEM professional. It’s so often overlooked and people don’t always recognize the value of presentation skills.
“An engineering degree opens so many doors and is truly what you make of it; that is, you will get out of it what you put into it. I’m very passionate about knowing how to tell my story, and I want to speak lyrically and relatably so that people see that as an engineer, anything is possible.”