Student Spotlight

Making people feel wanted is important to Liv Neeley. To her, everyone just wants to feel special. Seeing those around her, whether it’s her nieces, nephews, friends, or classmates, light up when they are acknowledged and appreciated brings joy to her life. During her freshman year, Liv didn’t feel like her voice was heard. Her professors as well as some amazing male students during her sophomore year encouraged her to be herself and to speak up. Their influence changed the way she participated in classes and groups. Those professors and friends inspired Liv to make a special effort to make sure that everyone around her feels included and has an opportunity to share their thoughts. “When you have a team and you get people together, it just works better and everyone has fun.”

Liv is known by her peers as friendly, accepting, and as a queer ally – something that’s come innately since she was young. “I’ve always had friends that were different than me and I never really thought anything about it.” As Liv’s made friends within the major, several have come out to her as identifying as LGBTQ+ and invited her to help with some of their clubs. She enthusiastically accepted. When asked what suggestions she would give to other students to help them be more accepting, she gave her personal perspective. “Everyone is different, but I like to think that we have more similarities than differences. It’s just letting people be who they want to be.”

Liv Neeley hasn’t always been in the College of Engineering. When she came to BYU from Pennsylvania, she was majoring in neuroscience. She realized she didn’t want to go to medical school. Wondering what to do instead, she remembered a documentary that she had watched about a woman who built bridges to help students get to school in third world countries. The woman had said that she was a civil engineer and Liv decided to give it a shot. Now a senior, she has found civil engineering to be interesting and hands on. It also occasionally involves being outside which was exactly what she was hoping for.

With varying interests, Liv has joined many clubs in an effort to learn more about the world. Not only is she actively involved in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, American Society of Civil Engineering, Concrete Canoe Club, Women in Civil Engineering, and the BYU Hip Hop Club, she also likes to be involved in different competitions within the clubs. Last year she was part of the BYU team that competed at the Blue-Sky Innovation Contest and placed second. Due to being involved in so many clubs, Liv finds that she doesn’t have time to do everything she wants to do, so she has learned to prioritize her time. By receiving information from friends within the clubs, Liv finds ways to be involved and help the all the clubs she’s a part of, even when she can’t attend every meeting.

Liv is also very involved in the civil engineering department. Not only has she been a TA for the geomatics class, she’s also been working with Dr. Macfarlane on his transportation research. There, she and a team gather information from scooter companies around Provo and observe what path riders take. The research team then follows the routes on their own scooter and records data that helps them discover why people take certain paths. By analyzing the data, they figure out if the majority of people take the quickest, smoothest, or safest route to school and other places. Her research and experience have led her to focus her degree on transportation, and more specifically transportation planning and the design that comes with jobs in that field.

Her dedication to involve and befriend those around her have led many of her classmates to look up to her and inspires them to do better themselves. We are so fortunate to have Liv Neeley as part of the College of Engineering.