MEs can work in many areas

New ME opportunities are available in biotechnology, materials science and nanotechnology. Some companies must fill jobs vacated by retirees

By Sue Marquette Poremba
Contributing Editor

'We’re concerned about finding skilled engineers to replace the qualified engineers we’re losing to retirement,” says Nora Swimm, business and member services VP at PJM Interconnection (Norristown, PA).

PJM is a federally regulated regional transmission operator in the wholesale electricity market. Swimm says that the electric industry in general is suffering from the effects of trying to fill positions from a smaller pool of experienced engineers.

PJM has openings for MEs as well as engineers in other disciplines. “To attract the best and brightest we are continuously reinforcing our employee-focused environment,” Swimm says. “We offer educational opportunities, skill-building, mentoring and employee life programs.”

New markets for MEs
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, www.bls.gov) mechanical engineering is one of the broadest engineering disciplines. Students typically choose a career in this field because they enjoy analytical thought, the opportunity for hands-on work and the diverse career options. The skills they acquire can often be applied to opportunities outside mechanical engineering.

In the 2008-09 edition of its occupational outlook handbook, the BLS notes that job opportunities for MEs are projected to grow by 4 percent. This rate is slower than the average for all occupations because employment in manufacturing is expected to decline. But new jobs are anticipated in industries based on emerging technologies such as biotechnology, materials science and nanotechnology.

Kenyana Dawson is a manufacturing engineer at Owens Corning
Kenyana Dawson likes to keep one step ahead. She took summer classes and graduated a year ahead of her class at Virginia State University (Petersburg, VA), where she earned a 2004 BS in ME technology.

A chance meeting with a recriuter for Owens Corning (Toledo, OH) at a NSBE career fair led her to the company. Dawson was familiar with the Owens Corning brand and wanted to learn more about the company, but she couldn’t find its booth in the big convention hall. “I was a member of the NSBE regional board and was so busy I couldn’t attend the fair until the last day,” she remembers. Luckily, she ran into the recruiter and struck up a conversation.

After graduation she entered a fourteen-month training program at the company and completed it in just ten months. “I don’t know if I was on a fast track or if it was just my drive and motivation,” Dawson says. After the training she became a manufacturing engineer at the company’s Waxahachie, TX location.

In her current position Dawson has a dual function as manufacturing engineer and area leader. “This plant likes to give its engineers operations responsibilities too,” she explains. The engineers rotate regularly to get experience in six functional areas throughout the plant.

Dawson is running a crew of nine people who are working on a project to optimize manufacturing equipment in her area. She explains that now some products can be run on only one or two of four machines. She’s trying to make it so that all products run on all four. “This calls for both engineering and team management skills,” she says.

As a student Dawson was often the only female in her engineering classes. Instead of being discouraged by this, she began actively encouraging other young women who were considering engineering careers. “I see myself as a role model for others on the same path,” she says.

Laura Armstrong: EEDP at GE Healthcare
“It all started with an internship,” says Laura Armstrong. Armstrong works at GE Healthcare (Milwaukee, WI). She interned with the GE division after a stint with General Electric subsidiary GE Aircraft Engines, now known as GE Aviation (Cincinnati, OH).

Armstrong joined the company’s Edison Engineering Development Program (EEDP) after earning her 2005 BSME at the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN). The EEDP assigns new hires to a different GE division every six to eight months. The program fosters both technical excellence and leadership. “It has given me the chance to tailor my career goals to my interests,” she says.

Today Armstrong is a lead systems engineer working with new product development programs for interventional magnetic resonance (MR). “That’s the technology for MRI and diagnostic imaging,” she explains. “We’re developing products that enable the use of MRI in medical fields like oncology and surgery.”

One example is a new product that allows a neurosurgeon to safely transfer a patient from the operating room to an MR scanner during a procedure. The MR images help surgeons work in delicate areas with less risk of complications.

As lead engineer Armstrong is responsible for delivering the technology of the products she works on and managing the tasks of a small team. “My duties change depending on where we are in the development cycle,” she notes.

Armstrong’s job also involves working with marketing to understand customer needs and translating them into system requirements. “For example, if our customer wants to image the brain, we would have to design a product with at least a fifteen centimeter field of view in one direction,” she says.

Armstrong grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, the daughter of University of Michigan alums. “I think my parents were pretty surprised when I said I was going to Notre Dame,” she says with a smile. Notre Dame is one of Michigan’s biggest sports rivals.

She selected mechanical engineering in her freshman year after sampling other engineering disciplines. “ME was more intuitive for me,” she says. She’s come to love mechanical engineering for the way it can be applied to the medical field. “We’re developing products that are really needed.”

Kelvin Corniel oversees Verizon’s bandwidth in the Bronx
Kelvin Corniel’s passion for cars led the New York City native to pursue a career in engineering. He earned his 2004 BSME at City College of New York (New, York, NY).

But he wasn’t willing to relocate for a job in the auto industry. “My family is on the East Coast and I wanted to stay close to them,” he explains.

It didn’t take long for Corniel to realize that his ME degree would open doors in more than the auto industry. “The advantage of being an engineering major is that you acquire problem-solving skills,” he says. “That’s what appealed to me.”

Corniel was hired by Verizon (New York, NY) immediately after graduation. He had connected with the company through SHPE where he served a term as chapter president. “Associating with others who share your goals makes your journey a lot easier,” he notes.

Corniel works for the network engineering and planning group as capacity manager for Verizon’s Bronx, NY region. “I basically oversee the bandwidth that goes in and out of my region,” he says.

He’s responsible for the planning, scheduling, and creation of equipment orders that drives Verizon’s FIOS advanced communications program in the Bronx. He manages nine central offices where he oversees the utilization of bandwidth demand in the area.

One of the biggest challenges Corniel faced going from fulltime student to fulltime employee was the loss of leisure time. He explains that many college students feel that once they leave their books behind, they’ll have a lot more time on their hands without finals and homework.

But Corniel has found he has less leisure time in the corporate world. “As a young professional you’re trying to catch up on the learning curve of your job.”

Michal Brown: space research at Northrop Grumman
When Michal Brown got a full scholarship to Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL), she had yet to select a major. So she began flipping through the course book to study the requirements for each major. “Mechanical engineering was the only major where all the courses interested me,” she says.

Brown did research in materials science and mechanics for her 2001 BSME. Her focus was on the microstructure of aluminum alloys.

After graduating she moved across the country to pursue her 2003 masters and 2007 PhD in materials science at California Institute of Technology (Caltech, Pasadena, CA). “I stayed in school partly because I was terrified of looking for a job,” she says with a smile.

As a grad student Brown was in the aeronautics department. Her original plan was to work at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, the lead U.S. center for robotic exploration of the solar system, which is managed by Caltech. But a job offer from Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (El Segundo, CA) changed her course. “I’d been advised to line up another position as a salary negotiation tool,” she explains. “But the work was too interesting to refuse!”

Brown works at the company’s new Space Technology Research Laboratory in Redondo Beach, CA. She describes the lab as a basic research start-up within a larger umbrella organization. The director is a former Caltech professor. “It’s like being in a research environment without being in academia,” she says. “It’s the type of opportunity that doesn’t come along very often.”

Brown is a research scientist. Her job involves program management in addition to hands-on research. “This is good because I discovered I like management too,” she says. On the management side she writes proposals, monitors the budget and keeps projects on schedule.

One of her projects is carpenter tape hinges, a deployment mechanism that has been used in satellites. “Like a carpenter’s tape measure, when it snaps back in place there’s a chaotic reaction,” Brown says. She’s been doing modeling to better understand this reaction and how it can be used in other ways.

Sandra Evers-Manly, VP of corporate responsibility at Northrop Grumman (Los Angeles, CA), says that diversity is one of the CEO’s top five company goals. “We know that our diversity is a strength that provides us a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

Ana Nino is a project engineer at Goodyear
Ana Nino’s first degree was a 2004 bachelors in international business from Akron University (Akron, OH). “I was a Venezuelan citizen on scholarship and had made a commitment to earn this degree,” she explains.

When she realized she didn’t want to follow her original career path she got approval from her sponsor to continue her scholarship for a second degree in mechanical engineering, which she finished in 2006. Nino had already accumulated credits in the discipline. “All my electives had been in engineering,” she notes.

Both degrees have been central to Nino’s career. After graduation she joined Goodyear (Akron, OH) as a facilities planning engineer. Her first assignment was to help with the planning and footprint of Latin American plants.

She worked as a global capital buyer in purchasing before requesting and getting a transfer back to engineering in December 2008. “I missed the analytical work,” she says.

Today Nino’s a project engineer in the projects group of the company’s global engineering and manufacturing technology division. She works for the Asian region project manager, building new plants in China. “I help with installation logistics and much more,” she says.

Nino believes her international business degree gives her an edge when it comes to knowing how a business actually runs. “It has also provided a lot of cultural awareness that is helpful in a global company,” she says.

When she first came to Goodyear, Nino felt as though she was supposed to know everything just because she had a degree. “I’ve learned that you aren’t expected to know, but you are expected to ask,” she says.

GE Aviation’s OraLynn Reeve-Manweller designs mechanical devices for aircraft
OraLynn Reeve-Manweller is a design engineer at the Yakima, WA division of GE Aviation (Cincinnati, OH). But engineering wasn’t her first choice. She started in music and changed to math because she wasn’t enjoying the coursework.

A calculus class and a car hobby eventually led her to engineering. “I discovered how engineering explains the world and how things work,” she says.

Although she’s chosen a career in aerospace, Reeve-Manweller is still interested in cars. “My goal is to someday rebuild an old car like a 1965 Mustang!” she says with a smile.

Reeve-Manweller earned her 2005 BS in ME technology at Central Washington University (Ellensburg, WA). What she likes best about mechanical engineering is its diversity. “You have to know a little bit of everything,” she says.

Reeve-Manweller chose to pursue a career in aerospace over the auto industry because she saw it as a particular challenge. “Everything you do is scrutinized,” she says.

Networking with a fellow alum at an ASME conference brought her to GE Aviation. Reeve-Manweller was hired as a design engineer after graduation. She’s in charge of entire projects, from the initial proposal straight through testing and production. “I get to do my own drafting and modeling, and I get to write up the test results,” she states proudly.

Reeve-Manweller works as part of a team on projects like the Boeing 787 actuation system, where she is responsible for the nose landing gear door actuator. She works independently on jobs like repeatable release holdback bars for the X-47B and F-35 aircraft. “The holdback bars project is one of my favorites,” she says.

A holdback bar, she explains, is a device that holds an aircraft in place on its aircraft carrier until the catapult fires and the thrusters on the plane are at full power. “If it releases the plane for takeoff too early, the plane and pilot could land in the water and be lost,” Reeve-Manweller explains. “If it releases too late, you could rip off the plane’s nose landing gear.”

Reeve-Manweller has had a mentor from the beginning and credits him with her success. “We started taking on the same projects so I could continue to learn from him,” she notes. “A lot of his knowledge isn’t written down.”

Kester Garraway is a continuous improvement engineer II at Harley Davidson
A career in mechanical engineering and a job at Harley Davidson (Milwaukee, WI) seem natural for Kester Garraway. “When I was a kid I would take apart BMX bikes and convert them to ten-speed bikes,” he says.

Garraway was born in Guyana in South America and came to the U.S. as a teenager. His interest in mechanical engineering was sparked while watching his mechanic father. “Some of my fondest memories are of working with my dad on scrap cars back in Guyana,” he says.

Garraway was also motivated by a desire to be the first in his family to earn an engineering degree. Freshman orientation reinforced his decision when the counselors declared that engineering had the most rigorous curriculum. “I wanted to take on the challenge,” he says.

Garraway earned his 2005 BSME at Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA). A NSBE national career fair led him to Harley-Davidson. He was down to his last resume when he passed the company’s booth. He thought, “I need a job so why leave with a resume!” The rest is history.

Garraway serves as a project manager and change agent for continuous improvement activities in engineering. He focuses on processes, systems, equipment and resource handling solutions within the constraints of quality, cost and delivery. “I facilitate teams representing multiple disciplines, both internal and external, to implement operational excellence strategies,” he notes.

He’s currently doing workload analysis for the parts and accessories engineering organization. “The goal is to identify areas of waste and variability within the engineering methodology and then offer solutions,” he says.

An excellent description of the work of a true ME.

D/C

Sue Marquette Poremba is an engineering and construction writer in State College, PA.

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