Greeting Members,
We've got a couple of virtual panels on engineering careers coming up:
Engineering Careers Virtual Panel: How to Find Success in a Career in Engineering
BadassWomenEngineer Virtual Panel: How to Find Success in a Career in Engineering
Our guests are set up for the first session and we are working on finalize guests for the second session. These webinars are intended for anyone who is looking for valuable career advice, regardless of what point they are in at their career. While the need for seeking career advice when you're trying to land your first job right out of college, or if you just lost the job you are in now, is apparent. What might not be apparent, is the need to keep seeking the next opportunity when you feel "comfortable" at the job you're in. A virtual panel on careers is something that I find really interesting because no matter where you are at in your career, and because everyone's career journey in unique, everyone has a perspective that adds value to the conversation.
The two guests we have for the first session have very different backgrounds. Terry Collier has over 20 years of experience working for 3M. He's a natural leader and has been in many roles that have required him to lead. He now works as an Application Level Engineer, but before that, he led strategic planning on a team that worked on critical projects to support manufacturing improvements; worked on a team to develop new technology for LED TVs; developed, commercialized, and supported products for solar and wind energy; among other roles. As an engineer, you may be expected to assume many different roles throughout the life of your career, and we're looking forward to the insight that Terry will bring to this conversation. Joining him is Colin McGoldrick, for those of you that have not yet started in your career in engineering, Colin brings insight into what its like to try to get your foot in the door, having auditioned extensively with Molex through many internship programs, and having successfully secured employment through those opportunities. While the experience of getting his foot in the door is still fresh, he'll give us insight on what its like at the early stage of a career in engineering. Recently, we added Axel Schmidt to the list of panelists. Axel, a Senior Technical Marketing Manager with Kemet. He brings 16 years of experience with Kemet and an additional 9 years of experience at TE Connectivity.
When we set up this virtual panel, we thought it would be very cool, to also invite members to have their perspective. After all, this is a community of engineers, and we want to keep this conversation as honest as possible, and hear what our members have to say, as well. The two members we'll be joined by will do a great job rounding out the conversation, as both of them are now retired, after years of service in their respective fields. Thank you to dubbie and DAB for volunteering and adding your perspective to this conversation. Many of you that are on the community are familiar with them by the impact that their great work has had on the community.
dubbie , has done a lot of projects involving robotics on the community and DAB has been active member on the community for a while, especially when it comes to judging project competitions, which is something the Project14 program, particularly, relies on to make it work. What you may not be familiar with is the background that has led them to be a part of this online community for engineers. He did his degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering under sponsorship of the company he would work at for the next 6 months. When he realized that this was not for him, he got his PHD in Mobile Robotics, and this led to a 37 year career as a lecturer at a university, teaching various aspects of electronics, embedded systems, computer systems and robotics. He progressed through to Senior Lecturer, then Principal Lecturer and ended up as Deputy Head of Systems Engineering. For the last 15 years he mostly taught on Masters Programmes.
DAB began as an electronics technician and worked his way up to becoming a Systems engineer upon graduating with a degree in Computer Engineering. Over the next twenty five years we worked on a wide range of advanced aerospace projects. At his last company, he began a student mentoring program that enabled the company to hire many students and transition them to engineers. When he retired, over forty of his students were full engineers with the organization and one was Chief Engineer of the local office. Since retiring, he has begun to mentor a small company doing crop analysis using drones and is now mentoring three students as they learn systems engineering and image/spectral processing techniques.
If you have any ideas of how you want this work, or ways we can improve this experience, let us know in the comments below. I'm excited about this upcoming series and I hope you are too. We can use all the support we can get for this so if you haven't registered to attend this webinar, please do so! :-)
Tariq