Women engineers and scientists launch fascinating careers

Even in these difficult times, an engineering degree opens doors.”
– Debra Rich at NAVSEA

Women in science and engineering overcome isolation through organizations like WISE and CAMP

By Laurel McKee Ranger
Contributing Editor

Support can be crucial for diverse students entering university science and engineering programs. This may be particularly true for women who, according to a National Research Council study, may face isolation at school and in the workplace.

Many schools have taken steps to address this issue by establishing programs that offer mentoring, support services and networking.

At the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM), Deborah Chavez is program coordinator of the Women In Science and Engineering (WISE) program. Its mission is to support women in science, math and engineering, provide social and professional networking, and increase recruitment and retention of women in technical degree programs.

“Over 200 students are members of the program,” says Chavez. “WISE gives students knowledge of opportunities and networking, as well as a sense of belonging. We track students and know them very well. Our retention rates are between 96 and 98 percent.”

WISE is part of the university’s engineering student services, which offers semester advising, grade check sheets and tutoring, study rooms and a 24/7 computer lab. WISE industry partners are invited to provide skill building and professional networking sessions. “For example, workshops might cover resume building, interviewing tips or job opportunities,” says Chavez. “Sponsors help enrich the program for UNM students, and even support a ‘shadow day’ event for high school students.”

Chavez notes that networking sessions usually draw ten to fifteen technical companies seeking students for employment. Students participate in mock interviews and workshops for writing resumes and cover letters. “We feel that everyone should have the opportunity to do a live interview,” she says. “Ultimately, almost all participants are offered a job.”

The program can be extremely valuable for women in the workforce as well. Chavez says, “We not only go through their resumes and review interviewing techniques, we also offer advice on how to negotiate a contract.” She rarely hears of an unemployed graduate, and most students go into junior year with an internship.

CAMP offers support to minority women at UC-Irvine
Kika Friend is program director and one of three statewide co-directors of the California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP), a program of the national Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP). LSAMP is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and focuses on increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities, including minority women, in the STEM disciplines.

At the University of California, Irvine, there are 900 to 1,000 students enrolled in the program. “Studying science and technology can be isolating,” says Friend, “and this provides a group of people just like them.”

Students sign a release form that lets Friend get an alert if their grades fall below a 2.0 GPA. Then she can make sure they’re getting the help they need.

Friend notes that the impact of mentoring is substantial. Each mentor follows five or six students each quarter and tutors them during mid-term and finals reviews. “Finding someone who has overcome similar obstacles is phenomenal,” she says.

The program has had good results: between 1998 and 2008, underrepresented minority graduates in engineering more than doubled, and biology grads increased by 62 percent. Engineering and bio are the two largest STEM majors at UCI.

CAMP offers opportunities for students to do summer research with UCI faculty mentors or at other institutions in the U.S. and abroad. Each year four or five students co-author a research paper. The program also encourages students to apply to grad school, and helps them with the process. “The program empowers students to find their passions in life,” says Friend.

Parisa Navidpoor designs bridges at AECOM
Parisa Navidpoor is an engineer I at AECOM (Los Angeles, CA), a worldwide engineering and architectural design firm with rail, road and bridge practices.

Navidpoor designs bridge structures with a particular emphasis on load and seismic resistance. She explains that the client determines the bridge type, and the architecture group takes care of bridge aesthetics. Her group then studies the request and gives recommendations.

Navidpoor started as an intern at DMJM Harris, now AECOM, doing road bridge design. “Now I’m learning about railroad bridges,” she says. “But I really prefer working on road bridges. They are generally longer, or on a curve, and are often more challenging.”

She’s responsible for doing calculations for the design and analyzing the bridge under seismic load, dead load and live load. “Given California’s high level of seismic activity, the seismic load is the most critical variable,” she says.

Navidpoor was born and grew up in Shiraz, Iran and studied economics at Azad University there. In June 2003, she moved with her family to the U.S. with help from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Her father, an EE, had been fired from his job in the Iranian defense industry because he was Jewish and the government was purging the defense sector of religious minorities.

At first, life in the U.S. was challenging for Navidpoor. She didn’t speak English and missed her family, friends and hometown. “I still have a lot of family in Iran,” she says. “There are eight temples in Shiraz, and until my dad lost his job it was very comfortable there.”

Navidpoor learned English while attending Pierce College, a community college in Los Angeles, CA. She worked as a student instructor and math tutor in the mathematics department at the school.

In 2006, she was accepted into the CE program at the University of California, Los Angeles. That first year, she got valuable experience working as a research assistant with the UCLA earthquake engineering laboratory, helping with large-scale testing of reinforced concrete link beams for use in regions of high seismic activity.

Next came her internship with DMJM Harris, where she designed simple structures and calculated cost estimates for large-scale projects. After earning her 2009 BSCE at UCLA, Navidpoor joined AECOM full time.

At UCLA, Navidpoor found the school’s SWE chapter events and programs helpful, and she was part of a study group. She also received financial aid and scholarship money that allowed her to concentrate on her studies.

She believes she got her internship because she had a strong resume and good grades, and showed passion for the work during her interview. When she hadn’t heard from the interviewer a month later, she called for an update and let the company know she really wanted to work there. “I didn’t give up,” she says. “It’s important to follow up even if they don’t have a job at the time.”

Navidpoor is proud of her work and likes helping the community by making people’s commutes easier. In her spare time, she works with This World, a Jewish organization dedicated to strengthening American families of all faiths by making Fridays family dinner night.

A diverse workforce leads to the best ideas at AECOM
Greg Sauter, senior vice president of corporate services at AECOM, says diversity is embedded in the company’s core values. “As a global company, we have to reflect the clients and the communities we serve.”

The company’s only asset is its people, he says. “What sets us apart from others is having the best people and the best ideas. We firmly believe that by having the most diverse workforce, we get the best ideas.”

Sauter adds that the other side of diversity is inclusion, “which means that everyone, regardless of background, ethnicity, gender and training feels accepted within the organization.”

According to Sauter, AECOM is very fortunate that the company’s business lines are diverse. “Although the market is flat, we still look for the best and brightest,” he says. “In the U.S., we are still hiring in the transportation field and possibly in energy, and there are opportunities in program and construction management.”

Debra Rich does cost estimates for NAVSEA decision makers
Debra Rich is a cost engineer in the naval acquisition intern program (NAIP) at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA, Washington, DC). During its two and a half year rotation program, interns work on multiple projects to get a stronger sense of the command’s overall mission.

Rich spent the first nine months working in NAVSEA’s cost engineering department. She developed cost estimates for various acquisition programs, which ultimately help the Navy and Defense Department leadership make cost-conscious decisions.

She then rotated through the diving and salvage division and NAVSEA’s Team Submarine. “I was able to work on a variety of engineering-related projects for these two platforms,” Rich reports.

Rich joined NAVSEA in 2008 after graduating with a BSME from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY). As an undergrad she did an NSF-sponsored internship at the MIT Haystack Observatory (Westford, MA), and another internship at the University of Maryland, College Park where she worked on robotics projects. At Rochester, she assisted grad students in material science research at the school’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Rich had a local SWE scholarship her freshman year, but there were no formal support programs at the school for women in engineering. Since Rochester is a small campus with typically thirty to forty students per class, “I had a close connection with the professors and advisors,” she says. “They gave career advice and helped us through rough spots, and the TAs were great as well.”

Only 10 percent of the students in her engineering classes were female, but Rich says it was a close-knit group. “I couldn’t get lost, and I loved it,” she says. The department secretary kept students posted on news from grads. “That’s how I got my job on campus.”

Rich says work experience helped her land her current job at NAVSEA. “I had done material science and robotics,” she explains. “The diversity of projects we did in class helped as well.” She was also persistent, applying on multiple websites and reaching out to the school’s alumni to determine which companies were hiring.

“The workload can be very heavy; having a study group and being able to talk to professors and TAs really helps,” she says. “And even in these difficult times, an engineering degree opens doors.”

NAVSEA values equal opportunity
“Diversity plays a huge role at NAVSEA,” says Irma Burden, command deputy for the command’s equal employment opportunity and diversity offices. “Equality of opportunity is taken very seriously at the most senior levels. The head commander, three star vice admiral Kevin McCoy, personally talks with all of the commands about their strategic plans for diversity.”

NAVSEA actively recruits veterans, people with disabilities, minorities and women. Burden notes that unlike private sector companies, NAVSEA has not laid off or furloughed anyone. “And federal jobs have become more attractive, which makes college recruiting easier,” she says with a smile.

NAVSEA employs many kinds of tech pros, including naval architects and computer engineers. It strives to ensure that the best professional and career development opportunities are available to all employees, including academic training, personal training and tuition assistance. There are affinity groups for women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. “We’re currently working on one for senior employees,” she notes.

Stephanie Will does metallurgical investigations at Timken
“Customers are the heart and soul of our company,” says Stephanie Will, a metallurgical engineer at Timken (Canton, OH). “I provide the data and high quality metallurgical reports that help customers pinpoint problems.”

Timken manufactures bearings, alloyed steels and related components and assemblies. Will performs metallurgical investigations and gives suggestions and recommendations to customers. “I’m essentially a steel forensics investigator,” she says.

As senior metallurgical development engineer, Will also supports new business development. And she’s becoming more and more involved in metallurgical modeling. That helps analyze production capabilities and identify new ways to be more competitive in the marketplace.

Growing up in Ohio, Will had a strong interest in ferrous metallurgy and joined the American Foundry Society as a student. She earned her BS in material science and engineering with a concentration in metallurgy, and her MS in material science at Ohio State University (OSU, Columbus, OH), both in 2007.

She had three co-op rotations at GE Aviation (Cincinnati, OH), but accepted a position with Timken. “I was drawn to the steel industry,” she says.

Will was a part of the school’s Women in Engineering program and participated in a summer workshop for women entering engineering. “We got to learn a little about the different engineering disciplines, and we went to the local Honda plant and the zoo to see how engineering was applied in the real world,” she says. “It was a great experience.”

She lived in an engineering dorm as part of the Women in Engineering Living-Learning Program. That helped her form friendships and study groups. The success of this program makes OSU one of the top places for Timken to recruit. “It certainly helped guide me as a freshman,” Will says.

She was also a member of Kappa Theta Epsilon, a national co-op honor society. “They linked me with the career services office,” she says. “It was a good support system.”

Timken’s global workforce reflects its customers
As Timken’s director of global inclusion and talent acquisition, Traci Dunn is responsible for diversity and inclusion. “We look to develop a global workforce that reflects the customers we serve and the communities in which we operate,” says Dunn. “We also look to guide the creation of an inclusive work environment to retain and fully leverage our global workforce.” The company celebrated its centennial in 1999 and operates in twenty-six countries.

Dunn notes that 90 percent of entry-level engineers enter an eighteen-month rotation program as associate sales engineers, in operations development, or as steel business associates. The company offers online training and development opportunities through its corporate university and tuition reimbursement after one year of service. “We have all types of training to support career development,” she says.

Dunn admits that hiring has slowed during the recession, but recruiting efforts are still active. “We realize that we need to be in a position to move forward and have the necessary talent in the pipeline when the economy recovers.”

Erin Cully maintains tracks at Union Pacific
Erin Cully is an assistant manager of track maintenance at the Salt Lake City, UT location of Union Pacific Railroad (Omaha, NE). She’s in the final stages of a training program that focuses on learning about railroad operations and doing safety audits.

“I’m outside a lot, and sometimes I get to supervise the work crews,” she says. “I’m waiting to be placed in my own territory.”

Cully earned her 2008 BSCE at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL). As a student she had a number of internships, including one with a short-line railroad that helped her choose the railroad industry and land her job after graduation. “I got to map track sections and note curvature, grade, speed and crossings,” she says. “My experience in railroads helped my passion come through during my interview at Union Pacific.”

She targeted the company because it’s a Class 1 railroad. “I thought it would provide me with good experience,” she says.

Once she receives her permanent assignment, Cully will be managing track maintenance for more than 100 miles of track. She’ll be responsible for ensuring that rails are fixed and ties replaced when necessary. “As a manager, you have to ensure that the track is safe for running trains,” she explains. “You’re also responsible for the budget that covers tools, parts and safety equipment for maintaining the track.”

Depending on the size of her territory, Cully will supervise twelve to thirty employees, including weld and section gangs and track inspectors.

Cully started school in premed, but eventually switched to engineering. She was living in the science and engineering dorm and “I thought the engineering homework looked like more fun,” she says.

Union Pacific taps affinity groups for college recruiting
“We understand the need to recruit and hire diverse employees,” says Tracy Scott, Union Pacific’s director of recruiting operations. “Research shows that within ten years, 85 percent of the workforce will be diverse in some way. If we don’t remain open to that, we won’t be able to meet our objectives.”

The company recruits at historically black colleges and universities as well as traditionally Hispanic schools. Representatives attend or support annual NSBE events, and reach out to SWE, SHPE, AISES and other diversity organizations.

Internally, there are affinity groups for African American, Hispanic, Native American and female employees. These organizations are tapped for help with college recruiting.

Scott says that given the lackluster economy, Union Pacific is currently hiring only to cover attrition. Engineers have backgrounds primarily in mechanical or civil engineering.

Fanta Sacko is part of a groundbreaking project at Bechtel
Fanta Sacko is an electrical engineer at Bechtel (San Francisco, CA). She’s working on the Prairie State Energy Campus project. The facility is situated in Lively Grove, IL, and will be the largest new U.S. greenfield coal-fired power plant built in twenty years. It also will be one of the cleanest coal-fired power plants in the nation, producing 15 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than comparable plants.

Sacko begins her day by checking designs, drawings and data from suppliers. She produces lower-tier drawings, does cable sizing and of course coordinates with folks from other engineering disciplines at the facility.

She earned her 2006 BSEE at Howard University (Washington, DC). As a student, she was heavily involved in NSBE, and credits the organization with helping land her job at Bechtel. She’s one of the founding members of the NSBE alumni chapter at Bechtel’s Frederick, MD campus.

During National Engineers Week, Sacko reaches out to high school students to generate interest in engineering. The Bechtel chapter also participates in pre-college intervention. “We help Frederick high school students with their school work and college applications,” she says. “We have enough members that we can rotate that responsibility.”

Sacko is originally from Guinea and grew up in Conakry, the capital of the French-speaking West African nation. Her mother is a physician there, and Sacko was brought up believing she too should have a challenging career. She started med school in Conakry to become a pediatrician, but by the third year knew that medicine wasn’t for her. So she switched to engineering. “Now every day is a new challenge.”

Sacko came to the U.S. by herself as a twenty-year old in 1999. One of her uncles was working at the United Nations and recommended that she continue her education here. But before entering college, she had to learn English. “That was challenging,” she says. “I took English full time for about seven months at Lado International College in DC.”

Sacko got a scholarship based on her high grades, but still worked full time as a sales manager at a retail store. She believes these two factors and her excitement about the company were instrumental in getting the job. “They saw my GPA and working full time as a great achievement,” she says. “I have a strong work ethic.”

Sacko recommends that students attend job fairs. “Read up on companies to prepare before attending,” she cautions. “And to get the challenging assignments you want, you must be flexible about where you will consider working.”

Deborah McGrady works on production systems at ADM Cocoa
Deborah McGrady is a production assistant at Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM, Decatur, IL). She works at the facility in Milwaukee, WI that processes cocoa beans into finished products like chocolate, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter and compound products.

Her job is to safely increase the efficiency and productivity of the plant. That may involve designing and implementing new production systems or introducing new equipment and ideas for production.

McGrady got her 2007 BSCE at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (Greensboro, NC). She worked as a student chemistry instructor and interned as a quality control lab technician at Fujiawa Healthcare Inc (Grand Island, NY) and Astellas Pharmaceutical Inc (Grand Island, NY).

She was also a member of NSBE, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and the National Association of Professional Women. In fact, a NSBE job fair helped land her job at ADM.

McGrady admits it’s tough being an engineering student. “The curriculum is very challenging and rigorous, so you frequently have to pass when your friends are going out to have fun. Hang in there,” she urges. “It will all pay off in the end.”

Outside work, McGrady is taking leadership and management classes at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (Milwaukee, WI). She also volunteers at the Special Olympics and mentors teenaged girls; through her church she does volunteer work with the elderly and small children.

Alicia Lowery is a design engineer at Intel
As part of a design team for microprocessors at Intel (Hillsboro, OR), Alicia Lowery is responsible for designing register files, a type of memory. Lowery got a 2006 BSEE from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) and a 2007 MSEE at the University of Southern California (USC, Los Angeles, CA). As a student, she had three internships with Intel, at facilities in Arizona, Oregon, and California. She’s currently working in Oregon.

A science and technology program that introduced Maryland high school students to engineering sparked her interest in the field. As a student at UMich, Lowery was a member of NSBE and became involved with a minority engineering program that provided academic, social and career development support. “They gave presentations and offered tutoring,” she says. “They even gave us past exams to review.”

Lowery believes her internships helped refine her career goals. “They help you understand what you’re interested in,” she says. “Students should use all resources available to land one.”

Though her career has just begun, Lowery has already received recognition for her work at Intel. “In the summer of 2009, I received a company award for excellence and execution,” she says. She also got a 2008 award for completion of a functional unit block on a processor.

Koty Bagwell does airport projects at LPA
Koty Bagwell is a design engineer at the LPA Group (Columbia, SC), which provides engineering, architectural, aviation planning, environmental and construction services for the development of aviation and surface transportation projects.

She works in the Greensboro, NC office and is construction manager on one of the four projects she’s been assigned to design. “I manage the day-to-day problems in the field as they come up,” she says.

Bagwell’s mentor helped with her first airport project, a taxiway extension that had to be designed in three months. “Each airport has its own standards that are based on FAA classification constraints and the type of aircraft using the airport,” she explains.

So far, her biggest project is a runway rehabilitation that is projected to take a year to design and as long as three years to build. The project involves taking out the existing storm drainage network and asphalt pavement, then regrading and repaving the site with an eye to reclassifying the airport in the future. “There is a bump in the runway, so we’ll have to take out most of the existing runway and regrade it to meet FAA standards,” she says. “I’m astounded that it will take a year just to design it.”

Bagwell grew up in a small town in South Carolina and is one of the first in her family to finish college. She earned her 2007 BSCE at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC).

Of the seventy students in her first CE class, only three were women. She considered joining SWE, but couldn’t find any CE student members interested in forming a study group. Instead, she made friends in class. “We developed a group of about twelve who went to the reading center in the engineering building to study and do homework,” she says. As an undergrad, Bagwell was one of the first women to be student chapter president of the South Carolina American Society of Civil Engineers.

In 2005 and 2006, Bagwell interned at U.S. Group, Inc (Columbia, SC) as a CE associate. Her work involved site design and project management of housing subdivisions. She continued working there after graduation until she joined LPA in June 2008.

Bagwell has her EIT and plans to get a PE within the next few years. As an EIT, she must shadow a seasoned professional and practice engineering for four years before she qualifies to take the PE exam. She’s also an accredited Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) engineer, which gives her an edge in green development projects. “It’s hard to incorporate LEED principles into a federal project because of all the regulations, but I hope to use my LEED skills one day,” she says.

As a construction manager, Bagwell has found that some older male contractors and inspectors have difficulty seeing her as an authority figure. “You can’t let people like that make you feel as if you don’t know what you’re doing,” she advises. “You have to project confidence. I must relate to them as a coworker, but I must also be assertive in my decisions.”

Bagwell urges students not to limit themselves to places where they’ve interned. “Those companies tend to see you as an intern,” she cautions. “By moving to a different company, you’re likely to be treated as the knowledgeable professional that you are.”

Christine L. Schultz is a meteorologist at NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, Silver Spring, MD) surveys the world’s oceans and the atmosphere and conducts research to provide the government with baseline information on the environment. Christine L. Schultz is a lieutenant junior grade with the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps), which staffs the agency’s ships and aircraft.

NOAA Corps also works closely with the Coast Guard to make sure nautical charts are accurate, and provides operational leadership to support NOAA’s many scientific missions.

Schultz’s first three years were spent on a ship doing ocean floor and habitat mapping, which provides useful information to fisheries. “We did a project last year in Kachemak Bay, AK that is helping to define the habitat for the species that live in the area,” she says.

Her next billet will be the South Pole. She’ll be the Antarctic station chief of NOAA’s atmospheric research observatory. “I’ll be doing baseline climate measures,” she says. “I’ll be down there for an entire year after I complete six months training in Colorado.”

In her current job, Schultz is out to sea for up to three weeks at a time. The ship operates along the Pacific coast from Oregon to Alaska. “We spend most of our time in Alaska, though,” she says. “In November, we head to Seattle for repairs and to process data until spring.”

As an officer, Schultz wears two hats: collecting scientific data, and also driving the ship and survey launches. “I could be running sonar, standing on the bridge navigating, out on a launch collecting data, or staying on the ship processing data,” she reports.

The surveys are in shallow water, and Schultz notes that they have found previously uncharted shipwrecks and shoals because contemporary sonar systems are increasingly accurate. This information is ultimately incorporated into NOAA’s nautical charts.

Schultz has a 2006 BS in meteorology with a concentration in atmospheric sciences from Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA). She interned at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, where she completed hourly weather observations and forecasted summit weather. She was also a shift manager at the Penn State Campus Weather Service in University Park, PA from June 2003 to December 2006.

Schultz applied to the NOAA Corps in her senior year. She was selected for appointment, and started right after graduation. She was attracted to the agency by the opportunity to do research and the sense of adventure. “I also wanted to serve my country,” she says.

“To be on a ship, you have to be independent, but able to get along with others, and you have to love the outdoors.”

With only 321 officers, the NOAA Corps is the smallest of the seven U.S. uniformed services. Most officers start as ensigns, then go through basic officer training and learn how to operate the ships, says Schultz.

“We are responsible for navigating the ship, but most of the crew is civilian,” she says. “Some of our officers are pilots who fly into hurricanes. I’m going to stick with ships, because I love hydrography. It’s a small enough field that I can make a difference.”

D/C

Laurel McKee Ranger is a freelance business writer in Randolph, NJ.

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