If not for a conversation with her best friend while walking across campus during her junior year in high school, Alexandria Merritt is not sure what professional path she would have pursued.

One day as she was switching classes at Normandy (Mo.) High School, she asked her best friend about her career plans. When her friend told her she was planning to become a chemical engineer, Merritt replied, “Me too.”

“I didn’t even know anything about engineering, but I decided that if she could do that, so could I,” Merritt says. After graduation she enrolled at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus through the Emerson Minority Scholarship Program, then transferred to Missouri S&T.

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