May 5
When Claire Vanderpot ‘26 decided to go back to school, North Shore Community College (NSCC) stood out as the most cost-effective option. Over the past two years, however, the College has brought even greater value to her life.
Thanks to fantastic faculty and hands-on opportunities, Vanderpot has grown tremendously during her time at the College, and she looks forward to transferring to the University of Massachusetts Lowell in the fall as she pursues her second career as an electrical engineer.
An Unconventional Path
Vanderpot has always had an interest in engineering, but while struggling in a physics class in high school, she was told she simply wasn’t cut out for the challenging field. Without confidence and the right kind of support system, she gave up on her dreams of becoming an engineer.
Feeling lost, she decided to pursue nursing school instead, earning her bachelor's at the University of Vermont. For five years, Vanderpot worked in a wide variety of nursing jobs: home healthcare, oncology, and even at a boarding school. When she and her husband moved back to the North Shore, she began working at Beverly Hospital, where she loved being part of the local community. Still, something felt wrong.
“I tried it all only to find that I was missing something,” she said. Even while working as a nurse, her hobbies were all engineering-related. A singer and multi-instrumentalist, she has a passion for audio equipment, and she repairs vintage turntables for fun.
“My life as a teenager felt very black and white: if I couldn't do physics, I couldn't be an engineer. As I got older, working as a nurse, I worked with people from all walks of life, and I realized that these journeys are so nonlinear. It is never too late to change; it is never too late to go back to school.”
She decided it was time to follow her passion, and NSCC was the first step.
Rising to the Challenge
NSCC was the clear choice for Vanderpot: in addition to affordability, she wanted to stay local, and she needed flexibility to accommodate her work schedule. The College’s Engineering Science Transfer program offers a clear transfer pathway to a four-year institution.
“I knew I wanted to do electrical engineering, and they had all the courses I needed to get to UMass Lowell. I had pretty high expectations for North Shore, and they've blown it out of the water,” she said. “I'm impressed by how hard the professors work to give you as many resources as they can.”
NSCC’s faculty immediately made a big impact on Vanderpot. Her first class was an online calculus class with Professor Patricia Dube. “I thought, ‘If the virtual classes are this good, I can't wait to be in person.’”
In Vanderpot’s Introduction to Engineering course with Professor Mary Beth Steigerwald, one of the first assignments was to present on what an engineer is and what qualities they possess.
Everything came together as she listened to her classmates’ presentations and she realized that yes, she really could be an engineer.
Over her time at NSCC, the engineering faculty have helped Vanderpot develop her skills and confidence, and Steigerwald in particular has been a strong mentor.
“She's been incredibly challenging in all the best ways: the expectations are high, but she also believes you can do it. We all rise to the occasion.”
Through NSCC, Vanderpot landed an internship at the Lab for Education and Application Prototype (LEAP) at Stonehill College, where she made photodetector chips and gained hands-on experience with soldering, oscilloscopes, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis.
The experience she gained with surface-mount soldering has served her well in another internship, this one through the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. She completed an internship at Northeastern University last summer and has been re-hired.
At Northeastern, Vanderpot works with Dr. Kris Dorsey, blending her nursing experience and her engineering interests to create a sleeve that can monitor arm volume. For patients with conditions like edema, this sleeve could help track swelling and disease progression.
“I'm sewing, integrating hardware, and soldering PCBs to put onto a capacitive sleeve. You put it on like a blood pressure cuff, and it can measure your arm volume,” explained Vanderpot. With eight fabricated, the sleeves are moving into user testing soon.
Staying Curious
Vanderpot is drawn to electrical engineering because it blends the theoretical and practical, and allows her to explore the design process.
After graduating from NSCC in May 2026 with her engineering science transfer degree, she will start classes at UMass Lowell in the fall. She is focusing on radio-frequency (RF) engineering and signal design, but her dream is to find a job in audio engineering.
Most of all, she says, it’s important to surround herself with others who love to learn. For Vanderpot, engineering and curiosity go hand in hand.
“I have so many questions! Being a lifelong learner is always asking questions, being
curious, and being humble, because with science, there is so much that we don't know.
That's the exciting part—what you don't know.”