For Sydney Mudd, Georgia Tech is place for creativity and progress. A place where she’s part of a culture where people are doing great things and inspiring her to do the same. So she’s particularly humbled to be the one Yellow Jacket this year honored by the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents for her achievements.

Mudd will represent Georgia Tech at the board’s annual Academic Recognition Day alongside one student from each of the state’s other 25 universities. Honorees receive a resolution from the Georgia House of Representative and a commendation from the USG chancellor. The Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the academic associate deans from Tech's six colleges selected Mudd for her outstanding scholastic achievements.

“I am honored to be selected out of all the students here at Tech who are doing amazing things,” said Mudd, a third-year student in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). “I feel like I haven’t done anything too special to deserve this recognition, but I am going to represent Georgia Tech to the best of my ability.”

“Sydney is very humble, always willing to help others in need,” said Chen Zhou, associate chair of undergraduate studies in the Stewart School. “She is an outstanding student academically and has demonstrated great leadership in her tenure at Georgia Tech and in ISyE.”

Mudd has maintained a 4.0 and is a Stamps President’s Scholar. She’s also co-founder and president of Black Industrial Engineers (IEs) at Tech and serves as the undergraduate representative of the ISyE Diversity, Equity & Inclusion committee. Along the way, she’s discovered a drive to expand access and participation in technology and engineering.

“Everyone says, ‘Find your passion. Follow your passion.’ I found my passion for helping underrepresented groups when I came to Tech. I figured out that I really care about increasing representation, and I can see myself doing this throughout my career,” Mudd said.

The Black IEs at Tech group has been one way Mudd is working to make a difference. In its second year, the club is focused on providing academic and professional support for Black students in ISyE and helping them build community. It grew out of conversations and town halls organized through the DEI committee where it became clear that Black students felt disconnected from each other.

The group regularly hosts informal conversations with students and Black alumni to support professional development. They’re also working to build a peer-led academic support network so students can turn to each other when they’re struggling with an assignment or class. Mudd said she’s already seen a difference in the way students pass in the hall and stop to talk or check in on each other.

Serving her community comes naturally for Mudd. Since she was 12 or 13, she and her family have helped feed less fortunate people around her home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and across metro Atlanta.

She’s extended that work as a member of the Georgia Tech chapter of Lifting Our Voices, which regularly makes sandwiches for people experiencing homelessness in Atlanta and helps them with basic necessities. She participates in service through her sorority. And she works with ISyE’s Center for Academics, Success, and Equity to introduce Atlanta high schoolers to industrial engineering.

Mudd said she’s not sure she’ll get to have significant conversations with the Regents at the Academic Recognition Day. But if she does, she wants them to know how proud she is of the work Georgia Tech is doing to build a campus community that reflects the broader society.

“I look around, and I see all varieties of people on campus,” she said. “During my sophomore year of high school, I came to Tech for a summer camp. And it looks very different now than it did then. I'm glad that Tech has made an investment in DEI and is taking steps to make progress.”