ARISE Student Feature: Raefa Malik

Raefa Malik was born and raised in Saudi Arabia before moving to Chicago with her sister after her sophomore year of high school. She attended Amundsen High School in Chicago where she was vice president of National Honor Society, a peace ambassador, and a member of National Honor Society. Her sister, Ayesha, meanwhile, enrolled in UIC’s College of Pharmacy.

She was inspired to pursue engineering because of her eldest sister, Areej, who studied civil engineering. Her participation in CHANCE (Counseling Help and Assistance Necessary for 21^st Century College Education), a five-week immersive STEM experience at UIC, provided additional confirmation.

“As a part of CHANCE, we got to live in the dorm and get a taste of college life while also building a robotic car through a project-base class,” she recalls.

Raefa applied to the civil engineering program at the University of Illinois, but was instead accepted into the Department of General Studies. As part of that program, she could later apply to engineering again, but wasn’t guaranteed admittance.

That’s when she heard about ARISE. The program, coordinated by the College of Engineering, gives a select group of students from under-resourced backgrounds in the State of Illinois an extra year to get ready for traditional freshman-year courses. Successful completion of the first year of the program guaranteed Raefa admittance into the College of Engineering. She jumped at that chance.

Raefa interned at Walsh Construction the summer after her freshman year at Illinois and decided to declare her major in mechanical engineering because she feels it gives her the most options after graduating.

“I don’t want to decide my entire future on just one major, instead I’d like to have some diverse choices” she explained. “For instance, I could go into manufacturing or the automotive industry, or combine it with a master’s in a medical field.”

In her nearly two years on campus, Raefa has been active with the Society of Women Engineers and has served as a peer tutor at Grainger Engineering Laboratory. Before her college career is out, she is hoping to get an internship in the consumer goods industry and “do something in the future that impacts people.”

This summer, Raefa, is one of three sophomore ARISE students who will be interning with Amazon’s Lab126 in Sunnyvale, California, where she’ll work in product design.

“This will be an amazing experience,” she said. “I never would have imagined that as a sophomore, I would have an opportunity as big as Amazon. It’s a dream come true.”

Raefa said ARISE has made the transition from high school to college and from Saudi Arabia to the United States a lot easier.

 

“I needed a support system and I feel like ARISE was the one who could give it to me,” Raefa said. The administrators and faculty have good connections and the cohort itself is a big support. Because you are with a group with similar interests and are required to live together for the first two years, you have that bonding experience. Because of ARISE, I am more confident and productive in my work.”