Brenna Losch (BSIE '26)

When Brenna Losch was growing up, her parents made it clear that they would not pay for college. So she knew she had to get good grades.

After her parents divorced when Losch was in middle school, she made the difficult decision to live with her dad in Crown Point, Indiana, where she would have more opportunities to take advanced placement classes in high school.

“I knew that I needed to go to a really good school and get impeccable grades and achieve in my extracurriculars so I could get a good scholarship,” she said.

Losch, a 20-year-old industrial engineering major, accomplished her goal. She was awarded several scholarships and received a federal work study and a Pell Grant. She expects to graduate in spring 2026.

While Losch knew she needed to excel to go to college, figuring out her major was another challenge. Even now, she says she sometimes still has doubts.

During her first year at Purdue, she says she changed her major “like 10 or 12 times.”

“I knew engineering was going to be a hard major for me,” she said. “I had such a background in everything that wasn’t STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics).”

At first, Losch didn’t know much about industrial engineering until she went to an information session to learn more about the field. Losch said she was drawn to engineering because of a lifelong passion for the environment and the loss of animal habitats. In industrial engineering, she said, the goal is to find efficiencies and reduce waste.

“As a senior in high school, I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world and give back because I grew up kind of disadvantaged,” she said. “I pictured myself helping out with the environment. Ever since I was a child growing up in Louisiana, I felt really connected with nature.”

During her first year in engineering, Losch says she felt like she was behind the other students – “like I was flailing my arms in the ocean with sharks swimming around me.”

But her belief in herself propelled her to keep going. “I figured if I work hard enough I can do anything.”

Losch’s determination stems from her childhood experiences.

After being homeschooled during her elementary years, Losch’s world was upended in sixth grade when her parents divorced. Losch and her two siblings went to live with her mother, who got a full ride scholarship to study law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Losch learned to be self-sufficient at a young age. “I paid for my own car. I didn’t end up getting a phone till I was a senior in high school. I had it a little different than many of my peers.”

Though Losch considers herself more on the creative side, she said she had an epiphany after talking to her mother about what she should study.

“I’ll do engineering – that way I can make a difference in the world,” she said. “Then I can get into politics and make a legislative difference – it’ll just be after I make a physical difference.”

Losch has already secured a summer internship at Pepsi where she’ll work in a distribution center in Tennessee.

In the future, she wants to start an environmental nonprofit to help rehabilitate animals that have suffered from habitat loss.

“I want to plant more trees and try to build back what humans have taken away,” she said. “I want to hopefully try to reverse a lot of the damage. … If I make myself a success, that’s what I will do with the money.”