Look to the Future: Surveying a Bright Future

Nayla Salinas was inspired from a young age by her father, a hardworking construction worker in El Paso, Texas. As a child, watching him do his job—making sure structures were sturdy and secure, even constructing their family home—Nayla always believed he was an engineer. He inspired her to want to do the same for other people.

Today, Nayla is a junior at NMSU, pursuing a double major in civil engineering technology and geomatics. Her passion is surveying, with which she can analyze, design, and execute projects that define our world using precise mapping and surveying techniques.

“As a first-generation college student, it’s hard to navigate through college life,” she says, “but this is why I love getting involved in the NMSU community – to have access to resources that can help me discover my path more easily.”

She serves as treasurer and project manager for Aggies Without Limits, an organization for NMSU students from all disciplines that helps developing communities locally and worldwide to improve their quality of life. Nayla decided to dive in by running for secretary of the student chapters of the New Mexico Professional Surveyors and National Society of Professional Surveyors chapters, both dedicated to developing, promoting, and supporting surveying education in New Mexico. Aggies Without Limits gave Nayla the opportunity to conduct surveying projects in Nueva Esperanza, Guatemala. Their goal: Build a gravity-based system for a small village that did not have clean water. She jumped at the chance.

Once there, one of the biggest challenges students faced was overcoming a high elevation point over which the water had to flow. Since the system was gravity based, they had to make a level loop starting from the natural spring to the top of the hill to determine if the elevation of the spring was higher than the elevation of the hill.

With few tools of their own, the team used a stick and a rock as a tripod and a person as their “rod man” to obtain measurements. “It was an amazing experience to be able to think outside the box and use only what we had in our surroundings for support,” Nayla remembers.

A couple semesters ago, Nayla was struggling financially. She had to work over the winter break, including the Thanksgiving holidays, to ensure she could pay for the current semester and register for the next one. A friend suggested she investigate the Scholar Dollar$ application, and to her surprise, Nayla was awarded Stephen Hardin Memorial Endowed Scholarship.

“I can’t express how much this means for students like me—to see that our dreams matter, that our voices are heard, and that we have opportunities our parents may not have had,” she says. “Donors like the Hardins are making a real difference in students’ lives, taking a chance on us by allowing us to focus on our education without having to worry about financial strains.”

After she earns her degree and becomes a professional surveyor, Nayla hopes to impact other students’ lives just like the Hardins have impacted hers. “There’s no way to describe how thankful I am, so I’ll just express my gratitude it in three different languages, including a word I learned in Guatemala: b’antiox…gracias…and thank you!”

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