Razorbacks baton twirler and engineer graduates
"I feel prepared for my next steps."
"I feel prepared for my next steps."
"I feel prepared for my next steps."
University of Arkansas senior Madison Leckbee is taking her leadership skills from baton twirling on the Razorback football field and group projects in the classroom to her engineering job after graduation.
Leckbee, who majored in biological engineering, will be working with floodplain mapping as a water resource engineer at Olsson, which is an engineering consulting company. She grew up in Elsberry, Missouri, where she observed devastating floods, and she felt there was something she could do.
"That always just kind of broke my heart that people, you know, lose their houses, lose their, you know, farmland, crops just to those floodings."
She had to balance the courseload from her rigorous major and being a baton twirler for the Razorbacks. The twirlers always supported her in engineering, and her engineering community always supported her as a twirler.
"I have two different family connections in the state university, which is amazing."
Baton twirling combines dance and gymnastics with a metal stick that is tossed into the air. She said the goal is to keep the batons spinning as fast and long as possible while doing unique tricks underneath them.
She feels like she will walk out of John A. White, Jr. Hall as an engineer, ready to solve the world's problems in one hand while holding a baton in the other.