Abigail Smith, of Cleveland, Ohio, says she lives by the words of renowned cellist Pablo Casals: “To live is not enough; we must take part.”
It’s a mentality that the 2017 Undergraduate Student of the Year carried through her four years at Virginia Tech, and one she plans to maintain after graduating in May with a bachelor’s in industrial and systems engineering from the College of Engineering.
An honors student with a minor in green engineering, Smith co-founded Service Without Borders, a transdisciplinary, student-led service organization with a mission to share the spirit of Virginia Tech’s motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), locally and globally by partnering with communities in need through cross cultural exchanges.
Under Smith’s leadership, the group raised more than $125,000 in funding and launched projects at home and abroad, including a partnership with an earthquake-affected and culturally Tibetan community in the Himalayas of Nepal.
Read the rest of the article on VT News (Note: I shot the top, featured photo — the others interspersed in the article are taken by other photographers.)