NC State engineering student wins national “Stay with it” competition

Nehemiah Mabry, a doctoral student in civil engineering at North Carolina State University, has won the grand prize for a video he created for the national “Stay With It” engineering competition.

The two-minute video, which follows Mabry through a day studying, attending class and meeting with professors, was named the best among the 12 finalists for the prize. Mabry will receive a $2,500 college bookstore credit and an Ultrabook computer.

Stay With It is a national initiative designed to help students keep working toward their engineering degrees. The contest asked engineering students to explain how they would do it.

“I’m here because I don’t just want to have the next big thing,” Mabry says in the video. “I want to create it.”

The award for Mabry follows the launch of the national Stay With It campaign on the National Day of Engineering on March 14. About 160 NC State engineering students celebrated the launch at an event at Witherspoon Cinema.

The Stay With It initiative is sponsored by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in partnership with Intel, MTV and Facebook.