Egan Bauersfeld

Egan Bauersfeld is a mechanical engineering student in the Integrated Design Engineering program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he concentrates in Engineering Management and is pursuing an accelerated master’s in the same field. He is a Boettcher Scholar and a 2023 recipient of the Congressional Award Gold Medal, the U.S. Congress’s highest honor for youth. 

Much of what Egan has learned has come from outside the classroom. At 16, he spent 10 weeks living with a host family in Germany, an experience that taught him to adapt, communicate across languages, and see everyday life through a different lens. Since then he has done sustainable materials research in Ireland and traveled to Rwanda and Uganda, where he saw firsthand how engineering and leadership play out in very different contexts. Next, he will intern in Peru, designing and building wind turbines for low-income families, before spending a semester at the Munich University of Applied Sciences in spring 2027. 

Integrated Design Engineering at CU Boulder is built around hands-on, project-based learning, and Egan has seen how that approach changes what students take away from their education. His time abroad has convinced him that the same is true of study abroad: the experiences that stick are the ones where students are immersed, challenged, and asked to reflect on what they’re learning. 

Egan works with Dr. Angela Thieman Dino in CU Boulder’s Engineering Leadership Program, researching how study abroad builds competencies students don’t gain in the classroom. He brings both that research and his own experiences abroad to the question of what makes experiential learning truly high impact.