She didn’t know it at the time, but Caryn Marty ’26 launched her engineering career in her family’s farmyard near Chokio, Minnesota, 100 miles south of Fargo.
The oldest of four siblings born over five years, Caryn recalls playtimes spent sorting through pieces of scrap wood, metal, and other spare parts, which she, her brothers, and sister used to build forts.
Those early experiences set Caryn on a path toward an outstanding four years at NDSU. Now a senior preparing to graduate with a degree in industrial engineering and management, she has built an impressive list of accomplishments, including:
Caryn says these opportunities came about in part due to her habit of saying “yes.”
But she will be the first to tell you that success is a team project — and hers includes family and friends in her hometown, plus the Bison Herd: classmates, sorority housemates, professors who believe in her, and scholarship donors who help make college more accessible.
“There’s definitely that family atmosphere here at NDSU, like everybody knows everybody,” she said. “And if you don’t know someone, that’s OK, because they’re going to include you like you’ve been part of their family for years.”
In high school, Caryn discovered her love of math and began imagining a career in engineering. But she also loved her economics class, which happened to be taught by her mom, Anita Marty ’04.
Researching career possibilities for her daughter, Anita came across industrial engineering, a field that combines business and math. Caryn describes it as a broad discipline that involves analyzing data and systems to make operations more efficient. It is part of fields as diverse as health care, manufacturing, and supply chain management.
Before long, Caryn started testing the waters, job shadowing an industrial engineer at Superior Industries in Morris, Minnesota. She still lights up describing her supervisor’s work routine.
“He was on the production floor, measuring things, analyzing things,” she recalled. “But he was also up in the office, using spreadsheets. I was like, this is great, this is perfect.”
Her question soon became, How do I pursue this path? And where?
After visiting a couple of other campuses, Caryn and Anita toured NDSU.
With just 30 classmates at Chokio-Alberta High School, Caryn was hesitant to launch into a university with 12,000 students, but Anita encouraged her to take a look. Another Chokio student, Darby (Beyer) Straus ’20, had studied industrial engineering at NDSU and told Anita that once she got into her major, the campus didn’t feel so big.
As Caryn and Anita toured the industrial engineering and management program, they saw pictures of Darby in a hallway photo collage and in pamphlets promoting the department. They learned Darby had served as her class’s commencement speaker.
Everyone seemed to know and care about Darby, who now works as a senior actuarial analyst at Optum, a health care company in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
It made a big impression.
As they left for home, Caryn told her mom, “That’s the place I want to be.”
Since arriving at NDSU, Caryn has embraced life on campus.
“You only get one life,” she said, “so I think it’s important to say ‘yes’ when opportunities arise. Why not?”
That helps explain why Caryn is the president of the NDSU chapter of the Society of Women Engineers and served on the 2024 to 2025 Homecoming Court; why she is vice president of Saddle and Sirloin and plays intramural basketball; why she is a Kappa Delta sorority member and works as a supply chain intern on the petrochemicals team at Doosan Bobcat.
While it’s easy to focus on Caryn’s successes and wide-ranging interests, her path through NDSU hasn’t been a straight shot from point A to point B.
She describes one course where she spent 20 to 30 study hours per test and still struggled to get through the semester. “I’d never been so happy to pass a class in my life!”
And she reveals that there were jobs she applied for and didn’t get — and the NDSU College of Engineering Ambassadors program she tried for and didn’t get accepted to … until later.
“If you don’t put yourself out there, you’re never going to know,” she said. “So you have to allow yourself to fail, otherwise you’ll never succeed.”
Consider Caryn’s teaching assistantship for Mechanical Engineering 212.
She started as a TA the second semester of her freshman year and, since then, has helped more than 600 NDSU students learn engineering software.
But during the first semester of her freshman year, she fought her way through that exact class, spending most of it completely flummoxed. Evening after evening, Caryn and her lab partner peppered the professor, Dr. Ali Amiri, with questions.
Finally, she found her footing. And by the end of the semester, Ali invited Caryn to apply to teach that lab.
Of course, she said yes.
Caryn brought plenty of energy and ability to NDSU, but she recognized getting an education would require outside help.
Her mom encouraged her to apply for scholarships, because she knew the difference they could make. When Anita was at NDSU in the early 2000s, her parents weren’t able to help her financially, so she worked 40 hours a week to pay for school.
Anita’s on-campus work introduced her to friends and gave her real-world experiences, like managing the Memorial Union information desk and overseeing check cashing, the copy shop, and ticket sales.
But working kept her from participating in student organizations. Plus, she was dating her now-husband, Jake, who was farming in Chokio, so most weekends she went home to see him.
“I look back now, and I wish I would have taken more of the opportunities that Caryn has,” Anita reflected. “But for me, my life was in a different spot.”
The difference between her and her mom’s NDSU experiences isn’t lost on Caryn.
“I think it makes her a little bit wistful,” Caryn reflected. “But also, I think it makes her really happy that I get to do things that she never got to.”
Anita agrees.
“Caryn went to NDSU and it’s like for the first time in her life, she got to be who she wanted to be and do what she wanted to do. And with that, she just really blossomed.”
Today Caryn’s two jobs — her teaching assistantship and her internship at Doosan Bobcat — are giving her engineering experience. And her scholarships are freeing up her time for leadership positions in campus organizations, which tend to meet in the evenings.
“If I didn’t have the scholarships I do, I think I’d have to pick up a third job for nights and weekends,” she said, adding that every scholarship makes an impact.
“It may not seem like $500 here, $1,000 there is going to make that much of a difference in a student’s life,” she said, “but that’s 100 hours they can spend focusing on what really moves them forward.”
One hundred hours. Those hours give students like Caryn time to learn, put coursework into practice, develop leadership skills, and build connections.
But there’s something else that makes those scholarships so valuable: “Knowing that someone has chosen you to support does wonders for continuing when the schoolwork gets hard,” Caryn said.
“I’m from a tiny town that most people have never heard of, and I have people who have never met me choosing to give me money because they want to support NDSU, they want to support students, and they want to make a difference — and they have. It’s given me a lot to be grateful for.”
Last spring, Caryn was selected as the student speaker for Evening of Distinction, an annual event that honors recipients of the NDSU Foundation Alumni Awards. During the event, she sat beside her mom, who she describes as her No. 1 supporter, and Emmy Vareberg ’93, one of her scholarship donors and member of the NDSU College of Engineering Advisory and Advancement Board.
Emmy, an industrial engineer, and her husband, Troy ’90, an electrical engineer, created the Vareberg Engineering Scholarship Endowment dedicated to women entering the engineering field. They remember how scholarships helped them when they were NDSU students.
“We know firsthand how transformative an engineering education was for us,” said Emmy, who with Troy owns two Fargo-based companies, Vareberg Engineering and Blue Comply. “This was an opportunity to pay it forward when we had the financial ability to do so.”
Spending time with Caryn has helped make Emmy and Troy’s scholarship donation feel personal. “It’s been humbling to hear how it has affected her life,” Emmy said. “It’s been a powerful reminder of why we choose to give.”
For Anita, the event was a special opportunity to connect with accomplished alumni and NDSU supporters like Emmy who recognize Caryn’s potential. And Caryn says meeting the Varebergs and other scholarship donors has expanded her sense of belonging in the Bison community.
She intends to pay it forward. Her experiences as a TA have inspired Caryn to pursue a doctorate in STEM education so she can become a professor who encourages future generations of engineers — ideally at NDSU.
“I want to be a mentor,” Caryn said. “I want to be known as someone who will always encourage students to say ‘yes’ to all the opportunities they have.”
It may not seem like $1,000 is going to make that much of a difference in a student’s life, but that’s 100 hours they can spend focusing on what really moves them forward.
Industrial engineering and management student
To help students make the most of their time at NDSU, contribute to the NDSU Opportunity and Excellence Scholarship Fund.
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