You could say Gretchen Rudel was destined to become an engineer. The daughter of two engineers and an extended family littered with them—her paternal family tree is "pretty much all engineering degrees too"—it wasn't a surprise that the Naperville, Ill., native chose to pursue a degree in the same field.
 
"I knew pretty much from my junior year of high school what I wanted to do," Rudel said. "I knew I wanted to do engineering, but I wasn't sure exactly which one."
 
In high school, Rudel gravitated toward math and science at the prestigious Benet Academy, making it look easy while she balanced her schoolwork with her blossoming junior volleyball career. Rudel helped lead the U18s Sports Performance club volleyball team to a U18 National Championship during her prep career while maintaining stellar academic standing as she received the highest academic honors every semester. She was also a National Honors Society member and graduated with first honors. Rudel knew she would be able to balance volleyball and engineering at the next level, but first she had to find a program that would be willing to support her in her endeavor.
 
"I always knew [I could do it]," Rudel said. "I came from a private Catholic high school that was super rigorous, and the club that I [played for] was rigorous too. So, I didn't have a doubt myself whether it would actually be doable [at the next level]."
 
Her desire to major in electrical engineering while competing in volleyball ruled out several Division I programs, but Gonzaga remained steadfast in supporting her goal.
 
"These women are students first, and that is the priority when play volleyball at Gonzaga," head volleyball coach Diane Nelson said. "It is not easy, and Gretchen demonstrated from early on that she had a plan. She is extremely focused and very organized. To accommodate schedules for each athlete is challenging, but we are very transparent in our recruiting process about what it means to balance both."
 
Rudel recalls that on her recruiting trip to GU, Nelson and her staff spoke of a former volleyball player who had graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. It was possible to do, and Nelson and her staff assured Rudel that she would be able to do it too. Rudel signed in the spring of 2017, and she's been successfully navigating the collegiate athletics and academics realm for the last three years.
 
"From the beginning, Gretchen established that she was able to balance both endeavors, and she has always been great at being present in the gym."
 
"When I [arrived at Gonzaga], obviously I was concerned with traveling [for volleyball] and the professors, just how they would react to it all," Rudel added. "I have nothing but nice things to say for the entire department and the experiences I've had with them. They've been super accommodating, super understanding. I think in that area, specifically academics and the professors at Gonzaga, I couldn't ask for anything better."
 
In addition to her athletic and academic endeavors at Gonzaga, it was also important to Rudel to secure a summer internship to gain real-world experience in electrical engineering. It was another balancing act for her, working around the requirements of internships with off-season workouts and the start of fall camp.
 
"It was around Christmastime two years ago that I was on the Internet looking at various things in the area [of Chicago], because in Spokane there aren't too many opportunities in the [electrical] engineering world. I just happened to come across [the Nokia internship] on a job site. I applied, and almost right away I heard back from them."
 
Nokia presented a welcomed challenge to Rudel as their Hardware Digital Intern. In her first summer with the tech giant in 2019, she was most often responsible for verification tests to make sure the products were powering up correctly. By the end of the 2019 summer, she had taught herself a new code language called PYTHON, and she was learning to translate that code for use.
 
"Toward the end [of the summer], I was able to actually translate some code from a language they have specific to their company into PYTHON—which is a more common language in the engineering and computer science world—that ran a couple of tests on one of their products they were putting out soon."
 
Rudel thrived in her first year, resulting in a second internship offer from Nokia for the summer of 2020. Though her day-to-day duties have been impacted by COVID-19, Nokia has enabled her to work remotely from home.
 
"This summer, I've obviously been remote so I haven't had the chance to physically test anything in the office, but they were having me work on a setup so that I could remotely control things," Rudel explained. "Just because originally no one was in the office at the beginning of May when I started. They thought that would be a really good idea just because in the world that we're living in right now, if we can control certain aspects of boards they have remotely, it would improve workflow too, just in general."
 
When she began her academic journey, Rudel said she always knew what she didn't want to do, and through her internships with Nokia and class experiences at Gonzaga, she has found that she loves the telecommunications realm of electrical engineering. She's also expressed interest in the medical device industry. But for now, she's just excited to return to Gonzaga for her senior year.
 
"With it being so uncertain, I would love to play our senior year and all of that," Rudel said. "But I know the experiences I've had these past three years…I wouldn't change a thing. I'm just so grateful for everything that's happened since I've been a part of the team and [being able] to be with them."