Professor establishes scholarship to honor father and brother

For Sarah Myers McGinty, Stevens is a family affair. Her father William graduated in 1936 and enjoyed a long and successful career as an engineer. Growing up at home, she remembers him as a great tinkerer. “I made him a poster with a picture of him that said, when I fix it, it stays fixed,” McGinty said. “There was nothing you could give him that he couldn’t find a way to repair or refashion.

William passed on his engineering interest to McGinty’s brother Neill, who graduated in 1967 and joined NASA, where he still works and holds the most patents within the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Birmingham. McGinty herself worked at Stevens as a professor in the writing program, and she has since published several books, including most recently the College Application Essay Handbook.

She started the William K. Myers 1936 and W. Neill Myers 1967 Endowed Scholarship Fund to honor her father and brother and support future generations of engineering students at Stevens. “I felt that encouraging and supporting students who are beginning their engineering careers guarantees a legacy that started for me two generations back,” McGinty said. “These students are the ones that will solve world problems like feeding hungry populations, bringing health where illness resides, and making economic changes to benefit the world.”