Industrial engineering student wins Leader of the Pack Award
Ashley Taylor Eli, a junior industrial engineering student at North Carolina State University, is the winner of the university’s Leader of the Pack Award for 2014.
The Leader of the Pack Program is a leadership and scholarship award that was created in 2002 and is used to recognize students who make outstanding contributions to NC State in the areas of leadership, scholarship, and community service.
Eli, of Mansfield, Texas, is also a forward on NC State’s women’s basketball team. She is the first student athlete to win the award.
She carries a cumulative GPA of 3.638, has two semesters on the Dean’s List, and has appeared in 49 games in her first two seasons on the women’s basketball team.
Beyond her academic and sports accomplishments, Eli volunteers as a peer instructor in NC State’s MAGIC (Maximizing Academic Growth in College) program, which is designed to help incoming student athletes make a successful and smooth transition to NC State and covers topics on time management, study skills, critical analysis, life events, confidence and team building, leadership, and holds scheduled community service projects each week.
She was recently accepted into the Health Systems Engineering Certificate Program, which is designed to provide students with a learning experience in preparation of a career in the healthcare field, and hopes that it will provide her with the experience necessary to obtain a career in a hospital environment or in the manufacturing of medical equipment.
Taufik Raharjo, a materials science and engineering student, and Amanda Casey Dango, a mechanical engineering student, were also finalists for the award.
Eli will receive a $2,000 university scholarship to be applied to the fall 2015 semester.
