Maggie Lutes knows her career interest is unique. That’s why she is thankful for her time interning at Ryobi as she prepares to head off to Trine University in the fall to study Chemical Engineering.

“The work environment and the people I work with are great,” said Lutes, who is focused on wastewater treatment while at Ryobi.

“Everyone needs a chemical engineer in manufacturing,” she said confidently.

The daughter of Doug and Monica Lutes recently graduated from Morristown High School as the Valedictorian of the Class of 2023.

“I knew exactly one week before graduation,” said Lutes of the academic honor. The race for the No. 1 ranking came down to Lutes and Chase Theobald.

Lutes was ranked third in her class as late as her junior year but rebounded to take the top spot after the final grades were posted.

“It was a wonderful surprise,” she said. “(The honor) was always kind of in the back of my mind. Chase and I are really good friends and we both are happy to see each other succeed.”

Lutes’ love of chemistry and math spurred her pursuit of Chemical Engineering at Trine, located in Angola, Indiana. Her visit to the northeast Indiana school sealed her commitment.

“I was looking at Rose-Hulman and Purdue. I visited both and liked them a lot but coming from a school as small as Morristown, it’s a tight-knit community, it felt like that at Trine,” said Lutes.

While on her campus visit, she met the Chemical Engineering Department Chair, Dr. Amanda Malefyt, which left her impressed.

Lutes realizes she is in for a big change in her life after growing up in Morristown.

“I will miss all the kids,” she said. “We have literally gone to school since preschool so it will be different not seeing those guys.”

Lutes’ summer is filled with a vacation cruise and more on-the-job training at Ryobi’s Shelbyville facility.

“I am just going to learn as much as I can,” she said.

And then she starts over as a freshman at Trine.

“Everyone hates the freshmen don’t they?” said Lutes with a laugh. “It will be fun. It will definitely be a lot different in college rather than high school.”

This is the first in a series of feature stories from the Shelby County Post on Shelby County’s Class of 2023 valedictorians and salutatorians.

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