Nyawira Nyota receives a Libraries Student Scholarship

Nyawira Nyota, a senior double-majoring in Foreign Languages and Literatures and Mechanical Engineering, has received a Libraries Student Scholarship (LSS). 

Nyota’s award was supported by a donation by Caroline Campbell to the Libraries Student Scholarship Endowment. The LSS program supports student workers at the Libraries by helping to reduce the financial burden of their education. The Libraries employs more than 250 student workers, helping them gain experience in emerging technologies, peer-to-peer learning and customer service.

“I work in the Hill Library bookstacks, and the quiet of that place is definitely one of my favorite aspects of campus,” Nyota says. “As a student worker here, I’m also more aware of all the resources available to students through the Libraries, and I am so grateful for all that’s provided to us because we attend this top research school.”

“As a student trying to financially support myself through college, I greatly appreciate all that this scholarship represents.”

In addition to her work in the Access Services department at the Libraries, Nyota has been Programs Chair on the Executive Board of the National Society of Black Engineers and a contributor to the #PassTheMicYouth podcast.

Nyota’s majors make for an uncommon pairing, but they combine perfectly to support her aspirations toward building reliable, renewable electrical infrastructure in the developing world. 

“Growing up in Uganda, daily power rationing that would extend over twelve hours followed by intermittent power outages was so commonplace that it barely bothered me,” she says. “And yet when my family moved to the United States and I experienced my first 30-second power outage, I was so stunned and terrified because I had become accustomed to the comforts of living in an industrialized nation.”

“As I reflect on how much progress poorer economies could make with reliable infrastructure, I see my role in making this possible in the area of capacity building.”

To Nyota, “capacity building” means more than merely dropping new technology in a community and calling it a day. It’s about empowering community members to meet the challenges that they uniquely know.

“One of the reasons I believe that developing countries have so much potential is they are not locked into old, less-earth-friendly ways of thinking, like complete reliance on coal-power,” she says. “Capacity building is what I am most passionate about for these communities because the people who will solve the specific problems each community faces are the people who have experienced them firsthand. Equipping people with the tools to 'Think and Do' for themselves is the future I see for myself.”