by Cayla Castells

From the moment you enter college, rather from the moment you enter “adulthood,” everyone is asking what you want to do with your life. While many students in their late teens struggle with the thought of planning their futures, I was fortunate enough to have a plan. From previous experiences, I knew that I wanted to work for General Electric. I had a plan, but then I was faced with the means of carrying out that plan. I talked about working for GE to several of my friends, all of which had the same answer: “Go out there and do your best but try not to get your hopes up.” Every person hinted at the idea of competition and how in the real world, there was not a spot for everyone. I took this as a challenge and despite the negative response I received from my peers, I decided to try anyway. For all those experienced with job hunting in college, the obvious next step was the career fair.

Before heading to the Engineering Career Fair, I did a lot of homework. I looked on the website to see which companies would be attending. I asked Cheryl Knobloch, Women in Engineering Program (WEP) director, numerous questions and even reached out to some alumni about their experiences. My Women in Engineering Program Orientation mentors were able to give me helpful advice regarding everything from handshakes and appropriate attire to questions to ask the recruiters. Each piece of advice was vital in the success of my trip to the career fair.

Following my plan, I only approached the GE Transportation booth and spoke with the recruiter for several minutes. I highlighted aspects of my resume I wanted her to notice and asked her questions about the positions GE offered for freshman candidates. The conversation went smoothly and quickly led into a discussion about interviews the following day. I left the career fair knowing that I had used all the advice given to me and succeeded.

My trip resulted in an interview and an offer for a position, but not everyone can have the same experience. The important thing to note is that the experience at the career fair itself is more than enough. Starting to network as soon as possible is the key to becoming an expert at career fairs and ultimately getting a job. The more times someone attends, the more successful they will be. Most companies do not accept freshman applicants but that did not stop me from attending and it should not stop anyone else. Even if the odds are stacked against you, doing your homework and showing a genuine interest and knowledge about a company shows a lot. This extra piece of effort ultimately stood out to my recruiter, rewarding me with an interview and a position.

Cayla Castells is a first-year engineering student majoring in mechanical engineering. A native of Downingtown, PA, she is a member of the engineering sorority Phi Sigma Rho, the secretary of the acapella group Sorenity Row, and is active within WEP. Cayla hopes to take her technical skills to sales and work as either a sales engineer or in management.

by Shreya Trivedi

BMW. The immediate image these letters invoke in one’s mind is of a sleek and luxurious automobile. But for members of Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Society of Hispanic Professionals (SHPE) at Penn State who attended the etiquette dinner on Thursday, January 22, it means something entirely different.

Ms. Diana Zeisky, the etiquette coach at the event, etched a new meaning for BMW in our minds – Bread, Meal and Water.

The Etiquette Dinner is organized by SWE every year at The Nittany Lion Inn. The attendees have a great opportunity to network with students from different majors.

Increasing number of employers are conducting interviews or corporate dinners or networking events which includes food. Learning about etiquette is a very important skill for students as it helps establish the self-confidence needed for job interviews conducted over a lunch. Interviews are stressful enough without having to wonder what fork should be used during which course or what to do with your napkin if it falls on the floor. Also it is important to learn the soft skills to differentiate yourself from all the other candidates.

The etiquette dinner gave the students an opportunity to avoid any embarrassing table stories.
The dinner began with introductions and small talk, before the students began the delicious four-course meal. Ms. Zeisky started with the importance of a firm handshake and demonstrated the same with volunteers from the audience.

For every course, she told us to go ahead in the way we thought was right and then demonstrated the correct way to go about eating that course of the meal. She also discussed the different resting position and position indicating that you are done with the meal. These little things are of importance as you are at the event to network or concentrate on the interview and hence you don’t want to be bothered by the waiter asking to clear your plate.

And the most important message that she gave was etiquette is not just about eating, it is rather about the conversation.

The dinner event would not have been possible without the generosity of SWE’s corporate sponsor – Noble Energy, and of course the very talented and inspiring coach Ms. Diana Zeisky.

Whilst this annual event gives much needed confidence boost to our members, our sponsors also get an opportunity to showcase and position their organizations, and let prospective applicants know about various employment opportunities and what skills are they are seeking.

Shreya Trivedi is a junior majoring in aerospace engineering with minors in Engineering Leadership  Development and Engineering Entrepreneurship. A native of Ahmedabad, Gujarat (India), she serves as professional development director for the Society of Women Engineers and the Engineering Orientation Network, and a Resident Assistant for Penn State’s Residence Life. Shreya hopes to someday pursue a career in the aerospace field.

by Andris Freivalds

Benjamin Niebel was a professor and long-time department head.

Ben Niebel was the long-time head of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (1955-1978) and the original author of a very popular industrial engineering textbook (Methods, Standards, and Work Design), now in its thirteenth edition. Due to his generosity and an endowment established in 1997, the Ben Niebel Work Design Lab was developed in the then newly constructed Leonhard Building.

This laboratory serves two purposes. It is the main teaching laboratory for the various work design courses: IE 327, Introduction to Work Design; IE 408, Cognitive Work Design; IE 419, Work Design-Productivity and Safety; and IE 553, Engineering of Human Work.

Simultaneously, it serves as the research laboratory for physical ergonomics and work design. Consequently, well over a hundred students use it per semester, including not only undergraduate and graduate students of the department for their required courses but also WISER (Women in Science and Engineering Research) students and other potential students who might be interested in majoring in industrial engineering after being exposed to the types of research being performed here.

The lab provides close to 1,000 square feet of space dedicated to human factors research and education.

Among the major pieces of equipment housed in this lab are: eight workstations with a PC, each accommodating three students; a treadmill and an exercise bicycle ergometer; metabolic and strength measuring equipment; two industrial workstations; and a variety of smaller instruments to measure noise, light, heat stress, hearing, vision, anthropometry, etc.

The PC workstations are used regularly for students to watch videos of real-life jobs on which they perform time or work sampling studies to determine a standard time for those jobs and/or also redesign those jobs to more ergonomically acceptable standards.

The smaller instruments measure human capabilities and limitations, as well as environmental conditions that need to be optimized for jobs.

The exercise and metabolic equipment help graduate students understand work physiology and human limitations on 8-hour a day jobs.

Andris Freivalds is a professor of industrial engineering. He joined Penn State in 1980. Freivalds is a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the Ergonomics Society. His awards and honors include the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society’s Outstanding Research, Outstanding Teaching, and Premier Teaching Awards.

Dean Amr Elnashai attended the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) 2014 Dubai Conference, United Arab Emirates, on Dec. 3  The conference included more than 400 engineering deans from around the globe.

GEDC was established in 2008 to serve as a network of engineering deans and to leverage the collective strengths of the deans for the advancement of engineering education, research, and service to the global community.

Meanwhile, Ivan Esparragoza, associate professor of engineering at Penn State Brandywine, was also in Dubai attending the 2014 World Engineering Education Forum. The forum combines a number of international engineering education conferences, and invites the world’s most renowned experts to address the latest innovation, advances, technology, issues, and challenges in engineering education.

Amr Elnashai and Ivan Esparragoza in Dubai. Elnashai participated in GEDC 2014 and Esparragoza was an attendee at WEEF 2014.

by Melissa Consiglio 

On the evening of December 2, representatives of John Deere were nice enough to host a field day event where students had the opportunity to travel to a local facility and learn more about their business and products.

We were transported by charter bus to the Valley Ag and Turf location in Watsontown, PA, where we were introduced to several company representatives from a wide variety of offices and departments.

Melissa Consiglio tries out new equipment during a field day event hosted by John Deere representatives.

Although the weather was not the most ideal of conditions, more than a dozen employees were present to host the evening. They served us dinner and taught us about their new products and what was ahead for them in 2015.

After the presentation, we were given the opportunity to get a closer look at these state-of-the-art-machines. This included learning about their new lawnmower, which is completely automated and can give your lawn a complete trim without you even lifting a finger. We were also given the chance to drive in one of their largest tractors and operate the vehicle around their campus.

The employees were eager to learn about us and our future aspirations once we complete our degrees.

It was an awesome event and, as a student, I appreciated the opportunity to have an inside peek at a company’s facility and learn about the different opportunities they have for engineers.

Melissa Consiglio is a senior majoring in architectural engineering with a focus in construction management. The Robbinsville, NJ, native is involved in several Penn State organizations, including the Society of Women Engineers,  the Women in Engineering Program, S:PACE, the Oriana Singers, and THON. Following graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in project management with a general contractor in the Washington, DC, area.

by Clay Swackhamer

This semester I am studying at the University of Alicante, Spain, and through my experiences here I have learned a lot more than how to rock a European swimsuit. Of course, I’ve learned a lot from classes, including a difficult class in microbiology (taught entirely in Spanish). This course helped me to iron out some of my microbiology laboratory techniques and go in depth into some areas of microbial metabolism that I think will help me to carry out better research in the lab where I work at Penn State, which is in the field of metabolic pathway engineering.

Clay Swackhamer says his study abroad experience in Spain made him a better engineer.

In addition to the engineering knowledge that I have built while abroad, I have gained a lot of life experiences. Before studying abroad I never would have pictured taking an 80-mile religious pilgrimage on foot, partying at club Space on the island of Ibiza, going to an indie rock concert in a bull ring, getting exercise by jogging up to a castle each day to watch the sun set, or flying to Boston for a week-long synthetic biology convention and then back to Spain.

The knowledge I have gained in class will help me in my engineering career, but, hey, I could have read about bacteria without ever leaving Penn State. The unique things that I got out of studying abroad are a flexibility, maturity, and sense of personal responsibility that came with being the master of my own destiny in an environment that challenged me and forced me to find new ways to solve problems.

My study abroad experience has taken me to Spain, for the most part, but it also led me to three different Mediterranean islands and five different cathedrals, as well as the Boston subway, and helped me become fluent in a second language.

I know for sure that I am a better engineer because of it.

Clay Swackhamer is a senior in biological engineering. The Topton, PA native is involved in many clubs and activities, including the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, Alpha Gamma Rho, Salis Laboratory for Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Pathway Engineering, and the Tennis Club. Following graduation, Clay will seek an advanced degree.

by Demetrius Harris

During the summer before junior year of high school, I attended a four-week engineering program at Cornell University. I had the luxury of experimenting with many hands-on activities and projects in a few of the several engineering fields. One of these was biomedical engineering. I did not know what to expect (being that no other field had caught my attention so far).

Credit: Yinka Olutoye

I was given a leaf with no rips or tears, fluorescent liquid that glows when a very specific wavelength shines on it, and a scalpel. We were asked to observe the leaf and its veins. This request was followed by a barrage of questions, such as “How does water travel through a leaf?” and “Would ripping a leaf affect it receiving water?” We were then asked to cut the primary veins of the leaf and place the stem into the special liquid. After a few minutes of soaking, we were told to shine the light on the leaf.

Surprisingly enough, the liquid made its way to the other side of the leaf despite the discontinuities in the veins. This was possible through the help of capillaries. The simulation gives bioengineers a replication of how blood flows through the brain. When one vein is stopped for one reason or another, is there another way the blood will flow to the other side of the brain to prevent a stroke? The professor leading the experiment then explained how mice are used for similar research on thwarting strokes. We were then introduced to more techniques and advancements in the field. One example is tissue engineering and the research associated with growing a completely new body part, such as cartilage.

This entire experiment and presentation caused me to fall in love with biomedical engineering; it lit a flame of passion; this passion is one that, from that day, I’ve been harnessing. It gave me something to be passionate about, and gave me the indulgence of knowing exactly what I want to do as a career by my junior year of high school.

Now, as a first-generation college student in my 7th semester of the biomedical engineering curriculum, I have overcome many obstacles and challenges. Starting at the Behrend campus, I was able to harness some of the key tools needed to succeed in the College of Engineering; ones that I needed to pick up on fast in order to meet the 3.3 GPA entrance to major requirement.

Structure and discipline were two key tools that I was able to perfect with the mellow community and limited number of activities in comparison to University Park. Along with this, small classes eased the process of creating personal relationships with professors.

When making my transition to University Park, these very tools that I was able to build upon made life just… easier. One of the largest challenges I had to overcome at University Park was the pace. Figuring out the pace, and how to keep up with it, in my first semester was a unique experience. One thing that really helped in the process was mentors that I had prior to the transition and some that I met in my first semester here. Having that group of people supporting, pushing, and challenging you can make the difference between good and great.

The largest challenge I have as a first-generation student is finding my own way. What I mean by that is: I have family there for me with great advice on life’s challenges, but when it comes to the specific challenges that I may be going through, academically, I can’t really find that kind of advice from those family members closest to me. This barrier has forced me to learn from my own experience, make my own mistakes, and push forward in my journey. With this, I am still finding my way, I have come a long way as a person, and as a Penn State student.

Demetrius Harris is a native of the Bronx, New York. He will graduate in May, 2016 with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in computer science. Demetrius plans to spend time doing research, possibly infusing prosthetic limbs with a more life-like feel of actual engineered tissue, thus further advancing the prosthetic and tissue engineering fields. He is an active member of the National Society of Black Engineers. In his spare time, he exercises to relieve stress, relax, and reflect on life.