Lynn Stephens, Environmental Engineer
Caitlin Day, Instrumentation and Controls Engineer
Brown & Caldwell, the largest engineering consulting firm solely focused on the U.S. environmental sector.
Slides: LINKS
This week we heard from two engineers working at Brown & Caldwell, which is the largest engineering consulting firm focused on the US environmental segment.
Caitlin has been out of school for a couple of years and is an instrumentation controls engineer. She grew up in Illinois and enjoyed high school and played soccer, supported the PC Celtics, and also worked in the dining room at a senior community home. She liked math and science. Towards the end of her high school time she was leaning towards studying Chemistry in college, and eventually decided on Chemical engineering. She applied to several schools and was accepted and went to the University of Notre Dame. During her freshman year dorms had been arranged so there were a few girls from engineering programs in each dorm. Caitlin liked this and was able to create a study group with some of the girls from her science labs. The classes were tough, but she worked through it. She was able to take two internships during her time in college, and this definitely helped her decide that Chemical engineering was the direction she wanted to go in.
For one of her internships she was at a company that was figuring out what gases to put in chip packets to keep chips fresh! Another internship she did was with a company that recycles nuclear fuel. During the internship she learned about CAD applications for engineering drawings, and was able to take a class in CAD when she returned to school.
As a Controls and Instrument Engineer, Caitlin's focus is to gather information about processes happening in engineering systems and provide the information to 'the control room' to help colleagues make decisions. She determines which variables to measure like temperature, pressure, flow rate in the system. She had a great diagram in the presentation that helps explain why different types of measures would be relevant.
Lynn is an Environmental Engineer. In high school she liked math and science and had a busy schedule with working at a day care, and participating in track and cross-country. It was her cross-country coach that suggested she consider an engineering degree.
She went to Michigan Technological University and studied Civil Engineering. She was able to get several scholarships for her degree which helped her not have college debt when she left. She also had 4 paid internships during her program. There are a lot of engineering internships available for engineering. At one internship engineering company she worked in the marketing department. They liked her problem solving skills and her approach to technical marketing - they offered her a job, but she decided she wanted to apply her engineering skills.
Lynn completed a Masters degree in Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Along with internships Lynn also worked on some volunteer projects in developing countries - such as Honduras (water quality testing and purification) and Guatemala (sanitation project). She loves being able to contribute making peoples lives better. That is what motivates her in her work.
To become a certified Professional Engineer requires you to take a big exam, usually at the end of your degree as part one of the process. Then after four years of working as an engineer there is another exam, which if you pass you become a Professional Engineer and get a stamp! It is real responsibility to be a Professional Engineer because when you review plans, calculations, and projects you are responsible to the public (and the environment) that you know the plans are accurate and sound. Your stamp of approval means you are using all your knowledge and ability to be confident they are good plans.
Caitlin Day, Instrumentation and Controls Engineer
Brown & Caldwell, the largest engineering consulting firm solely focused on the U.S. environmental sector.
Slides: LINKS
This week we heard from two engineers working at Brown & Caldwell, which is the largest engineering consulting firm focused on the US environmental segment.
Caitlin has been out of school for a couple of years and is an instrumentation controls engineer. She grew up in Illinois and enjoyed high school and played soccer, supported the PC Celtics, and also worked in the dining room at a senior community home. She liked math and science. Towards the end of her high school time she was leaning towards studying Chemistry in college, and eventually decided on Chemical engineering. She applied to several schools and was accepted and went to the University of Notre Dame. During her freshman year dorms had been arranged so there were a few girls from engineering programs in each dorm. Caitlin liked this and was able to create a study group with some of the girls from her science labs. The classes were tough, but she worked through it. She was able to take two internships during her time in college, and this definitely helped her decide that Chemical engineering was the direction she wanted to go in.
For one of her internships she was at a company that was figuring out what gases to put in chip packets to keep chips fresh! Another internship she did was with a company that recycles nuclear fuel. During the internship she learned about CAD applications for engineering drawings, and was able to take a class in CAD when she returned to school.
As a Controls and Instrument Engineer, Caitlin's focus is to gather information about processes happening in engineering systems and provide the information to 'the control room' to help colleagues make decisions. She determines which variables to measure like temperature, pressure, flow rate in the system. She had a great diagram in the presentation that helps explain why different types of measures would be relevant.
Lynn is an Environmental Engineer. In high school she liked math and science and had a busy schedule with working at a day care, and participating in track and cross-country. It was her cross-country coach that suggested she consider an engineering degree.
She went to Michigan Technological University and studied Civil Engineering. She was able to get several scholarships for her degree which helped her not have college debt when she left. She also had 4 paid internships during her program. There are a lot of engineering internships available for engineering. At one internship engineering company she worked in the marketing department. They liked her problem solving skills and her approach to technical marketing - they offered her a job, but she decided she wanted to apply her engineering skills.
Lynn completed a Masters degree in Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Along with internships Lynn also worked on some volunteer projects in developing countries - such as Honduras (water quality testing and purification) and Guatemala (sanitation project). She loves being able to contribute making peoples lives better. That is what motivates her in her work.
To become a certified Professional Engineer requires you to take a big exam, usually at the end of your degree as part one of the process. Then after four years of working as an engineer there is another exam, which if you pass you become a Professional Engineer and get a stamp! It is real responsibility to be a Professional Engineer because when you review plans, calculations, and projects you are responsible to the public (and the environment) that you know the plans are accurate and sound. Your stamp of approval means you are using all your knowledge and ability to be confident they are good plans.
So what do Civil and Environmental Engineers do?
-- Imagine a storm drain big enough to drive a car in - we need drains like this planned, created, and maintained to deal with storm water flow and retention. We need waste water managed and retained.
-- Civil engineers may be responsible for clean water management, and sanitation projects - all critical to people living healthy lives.
-- A civil engineer may be responsible for the design of new sustainable water treatment systems and be responsible for making decisions about where all the pumps, drains, pipes, etc fit into the plan (like a technical architect). Its not just about physically how everything fits together they are deciding what processes and heat reaction should be close to each other or not.
-- Environmental engineers may be involved in pollution clean up, or remediation (which is the process of cleaning up areas that have been polluted by old industries).
-- Environmental engineers are involved in a lot of work related to helping companies, and government agencies plan for climate change.
The water pollution crisis in Flint, Michigan is an example of what happens when Environmental engineers aren't consulted early in a project. Lynn lived close to Flint growing up - news stories like this are what motivated her to be involved in environmental engineering.
The advantages of Chemical engineering, is there are so many career paths it can lead to, such as: Pharmaceutical industry, Food industry, Manufacturing, Biotech, Cosmetics (more career info here: link). Engineers also go into careers such as Law (patent law is popular for engineers), Business, and some go into Medicine. Because engineering degrees require a rigorous science background, students that decide they want to become doctors only need to take one or two additional classes to be ready for Med School. (and the bonus is, if you decide medicine isn't for you, you still have a great degree with a LOT of career choices).
There's a lot of diversity in the day-to-day work of an engineer such as: site visits, testing samples, construction projects, educating the industry at large, performing calculations and writing reports. Lynn is currently working on projects around the world and in the US - Guam (water treatment project), Honolulu (climate change) and Thailand (climate change). Lynn is still involved in volunteer work for an organization called Water for People.
It was clear that both Lynn and Caitlin love their work and know that it is having a positive impact on the world.
-- Imagine a storm drain big enough to drive a car in - we need drains like this planned, created, and maintained to deal with storm water flow and retention. We need waste water managed and retained.
-- Civil engineers may be responsible for clean water management, and sanitation projects - all critical to people living healthy lives.
-- A civil engineer may be responsible for the design of new sustainable water treatment systems and be responsible for making decisions about where all the pumps, drains, pipes, etc fit into the plan (like a technical architect). Its not just about physically how everything fits together they are deciding what processes and heat reaction should be close to each other or not.
-- Environmental engineers may be involved in pollution clean up, or remediation (which is the process of cleaning up areas that have been polluted by old industries).
-- Environmental engineers are involved in a lot of work related to helping companies, and government agencies plan for climate change.
The water pollution crisis in Flint, Michigan is an example of what happens when Environmental engineers aren't consulted early in a project. Lynn lived close to Flint growing up - news stories like this are what motivated her to be involved in environmental engineering.
The advantages of Chemical engineering, is there are so many career paths it can lead to, such as: Pharmaceutical industry, Food industry, Manufacturing, Biotech, Cosmetics (more career info here: link). Engineers also go into careers such as Law (patent law is popular for engineers), Business, and some go into Medicine. Because engineering degrees require a rigorous science background, students that decide they want to become doctors only need to take one or two additional classes to be ready for Med School. (and the bonus is, if you decide medicine isn't for you, you still have a great degree with a LOT of career choices).
There's a lot of diversity in the day-to-day work of an engineer such as: site visits, testing samples, construction projects, educating the industry at large, performing calculations and writing reports. Lynn is currently working on projects around the world and in the US - Guam (water treatment project), Honolulu (climate change) and Thailand (climate change). Lynn is still involved in volunteer work for an organization called Water for People.
It was clear that both Lynn and Caitlin love their work and know that it is having a positive impact on the world.