Therese Malinowski 2020 National Gold Award Girl Scout and first year engineering student at Purdue University

Therese Malinowski is a freshman in First Year Engineering at Purdue University with the intent to major in Aerospace Engineering. She has been a Girl Scout since kindergarten and earned the honor of 2020 National Gold Award Girl Scout for her database “Project Dandelion,” the world’s first comprehensive campus sexual assault resource. 

After learning that many colleges have purposefully covered up student sexual assault allegations from a documentary, and then finding that information regarding sexual assault on college campuses was incredibly difficult to find, Therese became motivated to create a resource for potential and current college students to understand the reality of sexual assault at a specific school. The database became known as “Project Dandelion,” and currently covers specific statistics, resources, and information on every college in Illinois, as well as general information that applies to every college in the nation. The database is still a work in progress, and developments are underway to grow this project to a national resource. Everyone needs to go to a college they feel safe attending, and information transparency is the first step to improving the dangerous culture of campus sexual assault.

Therese has always had a deep love for engineering and aviation. She currently participates in Purdue’s Engineering Projects in Community Service Program, serving as design lead for a mobility technology team, and is an active member of AIAA, and serves on the Vertical Flight Systems design team. Outside of school, she volunteers at a local airport through her EAA chapter to shadow A&Ps and help with the construction of an experimental aircraft.