One Degree Further: How Katherine Growney Is Preparing to Make an Impact
Katherine Growney portrait. Courtesy photo.
Katherine Growney, E/MS’26, mechanical engineering, completed three co-ops during her time at Northeastern. Through the Plus One program, she enters the workforce with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, industry experience across multiple fields, and a drive to build technology that makes a difference in people’s lives.
Katherine Growney is completing both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering and engineering management at Northeastern, through the Plus One Program. Growney has engaged in STEM most of her life—from summer camps to the robotics team—and engineering has always been a passion of hers. Not knowing the exact discipline she wished to study, she chose mechanical engineering because of its broad application, which suited her varied interests. She knew that a mechanical engineering degree would allow her to thrive in almost any industry.
Growing up in Massachusetts, she knew of Northeastern from friends and other positive endorsements. Upon visiting, she was impressed by the campus and also the Co-op Program, recognizing it as an excellent way to gain valuable industry experience. Overall, Growney admired the vast number of opportunities Northeastern provided for students to succeed academically and professionally.
Research and mentors
Growney presenting her research at the RISE Expo. Courtesy photo.
Growney is proud of her research with Associate Teaching Professor Marguerite Matherne, which earned her the PEAK Ascent Spring award in 2025. The project utilized ChatGPT to analyze student responses to questions in Canvas, allowing Professor Matherne to augment her lectures based on students’ comprehension of the material. The objective was to find trends among the responses using AI so Matherne could identify misunderstandings among the students and alter her lectures as needed. They found that while this process is helpful, ChatGPT struggled to accurately process large data sets while processing all of Matherne’s sessions. The duo eventually switched to Claude, which performed better, but still struggled with hallucinations in larger data sets.
Growney considers Professor Matherne’s mentorship to have significant impact on her studies, commenting that Professor Matherne is “a really good professor and a powerful role model as a woman in engineering.” She admires Professor Matherne as an inspiration and an example of what Growney could be in the future. Growney felt encouraged by her and notes that “she’s the type of person that if you ask for help, she will help you right away, and always wants to help you learn.”
Co-ops and extracurriculars
Growney’s first co-op was serving as an engineering intern at ICO Energy and Engineering. Her main responsibility was to conduct inspections at construction sites or buildings equipped with their HVAC technology and run tests to measure their efficiency. As this work predated many of her required engineering courses, Growney gained practical applied knowledge before learning the theory in classes. She mentions that this experience taught her a lot about professional etiquette and appreciates her co-op advisor for always being open to questions about workplace behavior.
Growney spent her second co-op as a mechanical engineer for Fikst Product Development with Re: Build Manufacturing, where she worked on six projects, spanning medical devices to climate technology, focused on repeated prototyping and presenting to clients. Growney credits company-provided training sessions with developing her technical machine shop skills, like using power tools and 3D printing. She also garnered a solid foundation in prototyping and making her own designs, which she considers one of the most valuable skills for an engineer.
Her last co-op was at Myomo Inc, which develops a robotic armbrace designed to aid mobility in patients with traumatic brain injuries. As a mechanical engineer co-op, she participated in research, design, and testing the product to optimize it for a patient’s needs. While she worked primarily in research and development, Growney was also charged with collecting feedback directly from existing patients. Over the six months she was at Myomo, she saw improvement in the project, as well as the direct impact her work had on others through interacting with patients. This opportunity provided her with both valuable experience and a professional network in the field she has a growing interest in pursuing as a career.
Growney with fellow SWE members in 2025. Courtesy photo.
Beyond the classroom and co-ops, Growney is a member of the Society of Woman Engineers (SWE); she has been on the E-board since she joined her freshman year. The club’s focus is to create community through weekly meetings, volunteer opportunities, and social events for woman engineers to connect with like-mined peers. One outreach event she highlights is called “Cool Woman, Hot Careers,” when Growney served as event coordinator to run the event that helps high school students get involved in STEM fields. She considers her stint as membership chair to be the most rewarding, where she was in charge of recruitment and maintaining current membership. Under her leadership, Growney was able to see their membership increase and remain consistent throughout the year, which resulted in recognition at their annual conference for strong membership retention. She held many roles in the club to build her leadership skills through event coordination and interpersonal communication. According to Growey, her time in SWE gave her a lot of confidence, as she is now unafraid to speak her mind, an important skill for an engineer.
Advice and ambition
Growney offers this bit of advice to students: “Get involved with everything—it is never too late to try something new.” In her first year, she was hesitant to explore opportunities and put herself out there. However, once she joined student organizations and other communities she was interested in, she has broadened her social life and met lifelong friends along the way. She notes that meeting new people and forming connections has been one of the highlights of her time at Northeastern.
After completing both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Growney plans to move into industry, with interests spanning medical devices, clean technology, and climate technology. More than any specific field, what drives her is the chance to do work that tangibly improves people’s lives—whether that means hearing directly from a patient whose care was affected, or seeing the downstream impact of a product she helped bring to market. Further along in her career, she hopes to step into a project management or team lead role, putting the leadership skills she developed at Northeastern to use. With a mechanical engineering background that translates across industries, Growney is well-positioned to follow that motivation wherever it leads.