Mollie Mockert has an engineer's mind and an engineer's heart

“Art and math; those are the two parts of my brain,” says Mollie Mockert (BCE 2025). “One part is really technical and likes to follow steps, so, Math. Another part of my brain seeks creative outlets. I’ve worked with a lot of creative, physical art forms like ceramics, glass, and metal work; I love doing pottery and painting.” Because of her love for math and art, engineering seemed to be a good career fit for her. Another big part of her make-up, that maybe supersedes the rest, is her desire to be of service to others, which it turns out is a perfect fit with civil engineering.

Mockert’s desire to be of service was cemented through her volunteer experience with the  Appalachian Service Project (ASP). She started volunteering with that organization in high school and continued during summers throughout her time at the University of Minnesota. Now, post-graduation, she is serving for one more year through ASP’s Fellowship Program. 

The Fellowship Program is designed for people to serve for one year leading one of ASP’s year-round centers. On her decision to continue, Mockert said, “I wanted to be able to work on the humanitarian side of things for a little longer. I am getting a lot out of my work with ASP and contributing a lot at this point, too. It is an opportunity I will not get again. I happened to fall into this humanitarian work, and I thought, 'This is amazing!' I loved it so much!"

“This type of work is unique. You get to know the homeowners. You hear their life stories, and it breaks down assumptions that you have about people. When I first came, I wondered, why are these people struggling so much? Why is there a housing crisis in this area? When I got to know them, I learned that mining is changing and changing their lives. I learned about generational trauma that impacts them still. We would meet and often hang out with the kids that were living in the houses we worked on. I saw many similarities between us, but these families are in such unfortunate conditions. I realized there are not that many differences other than our circumstances and where we were born. That was so interesting to me. And I was able to use my privilege to help improve their lives, to make their homes “warmer, safer, and drier” (ASP’s stated goal, asphome.org). That was really impactful for me. And both sides were grateful. The families were grateful because they got to live in better conditions. I was grateful that I had this experience and got to learn more about the world and got stretched out of my comfort zone.”

The ASP was started in 1969, with a vision to eradicate substandard housing in Central Appalachia and to transform everyone who comes in contact with their ministry (asphome.org). More than 15,000 volunteers a year support ASP, with many coming from groups that have a long history with ASP and come back year after year. Mockert’s high school had been volunteering for around twenty years (and just stopped this year). Each year they would send a team to work for a week in one of the service center states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia). The group would be assigned a home repair project. “One time,” recalls Mockert, “we replaced a wall that had water damage, one year we redid a tin roof on a house. A bunch of projects are possible.”

As summer staff, Mockert has worked in a construction management role and as a Finance Coordinator responsible for grant compliance, budgeting, and fundraising. “I ended up raising the most money of any of the project groups, so we got to say yes to a lot more projects.”

Building codes

Warmer, safer, drier is the humble goal of ASP. “Sometimes,” recalled Mockert, “the most we could say is, we are going to get you a new roof and keep the water from leaking in and making the other problems worse. It’s sad.”

“When I first started learning about building codes in my classes, it made me realize that the homes I worked on for ASP were nowhere near meeting those building codes. Building codes are a good place to start making a difference. Codes are different in different parts of the country. And some parts of the country are overlooked, no one is trying to make sure that all residential properties are meeting these codes. It can be hard to meet these codes. People live in those homes — that was a hard thing to think about.”

“Soft” skills

Mockert found that her unconventional summer internships allowed her to develop some professional skills that she could talk about in job interviews. Skills such as teamwork, creative thinking (“because solutions are never straight forward; every home is quirky, so there was a lot of creative thinking involved”), and how to communicate technical information to people without a technical background.

“I learned a lot of soft skills that are really important for engineering. As a woman working in the construction field, it was important for me to learn to assert myself and explain that I have technical knowledge. Sometimes a volunteer would go to one of my male staffers over me. Volunteers do not have to have technical or construction experience or knowledge. I can show them how to use power tools. As a staff person, I actually had the technical knowledge and could explain things. So, it was important for me to learn to handle those situations.”

Mockert also completed a more traditional internship with Pierce Engineers, a relatively small structural engineering consulting office. “I grew my Reddit skills, did a lot of Reddit modeling and some structural design. I learned to work with construction documents, and learned structural software, learned the organization. I practiced professional communication skills that I hadn’t learned before. In high school, college, and at the ASP, we used very casual communication, texting or calling people all the time. In my internship, we wrote memos, had to present our ideas, and handle phone calls with a professional demeanor. That was different than what I had done before. I tried to watch and imitate what others did. Being in the office was very different than being on my feet eight hours a day, visiting various sites, talking to people, thinking on my feet. A very different pace.”

Ethical and human considerations

Creating infrastructure for society involves considering all the stakeholders and how people will use the built environment. Mockert thinks about these issues. “I have a minor in interdisciplinary design, which involved a lot of architecture classes. Considering how people use the space is a big issue. In architecture, designers think about people using the space as well as the space itself. It is simpler for residential construction. You consider who will live there and how they will use the space, and the space is built around them. My experience with ASP was a lot about how the people, the families, fit into these projects.”

Advice for students

“I would tell other students, do not count out alternative internship experiences. I learned a lot doing a nontraditional internship. I had to be constantly creative, responding to situations and talking to people from situations similar to and different from what I knew. I had to coordinate a lot of different things. There was so much to learn—hard skills and soft skills—that I will take with me and use for years to come.”