Meet the First-Year Class for 2018
When Head Meets Heart
Dani Coan has a broad array of interests, but engineering wasn’t always one of them. She’d planned on majoring in English — that is, until a member of NC State’s textile engineering program came to speak at her Winston-Salem high school.
“After her talk, I knew immediately that I wanted to be an engineer,” said Coan. Now she’s embarking on a biomedical engineering degree, with dreams of designing prosthetics for veterans.
But that doesn’t mean Coan is letting her other passions fall by the wayside. In fact, she chose NC State so she wouldn’t have to.
“You can float around and have lots of different interests here,” she said. “That’s a reason why I chose NC State: They emphasize being a well-rounded person.”
In high school, Coan spent her free time winning poetry recitation contests or competing with her all-girl robotics team. Now, staying on track in her first year of college, she’s readied a list of theater classes she plans to take, and she’s found a like-minded community of women in STEM at WISE Village.
That focus on balance — between arts and science, between academic and personal fulfillment — is what led Coan to select NC State above other schools she considered, such as Georgia Tech.
“I believe in following your heart more than your head. But if you can have both, that’s great. There’s so much support here academically and emotionally. I feel like I really belong.”
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