Christine Menges |
Engineering students, often believed to be on the fast-track to a steady career, take different post-graduate paths than one might expect. Three senior engineering students sat down with The Beacon to talk about their future plans. While none are staring at unemployment prospects, only one of them is headed directly into the engineering workforce.
Emily Bliven, master’s in biomedical engineering at UP
Tearing both her ACLs playing soccer helped direct senior Emily Bliven to a career in biomedical engineering.
“I was always really interested in the healing process, and going to physical therapy, and kind of treating the body like a machine in order to heal it,” Bliven said.
Majoring in mechanical engineering with the ultimate goal of entering biomedical engineering helped combine Bliven’s interests in math, science and the human body. Next year, Bliven will enter UP’s new one-year biomedical engineering program, to which Bliven was accepted as a junior.
“Biomedical engineering is basically engineering for the well-being of humans,” Bliven said.
She was first introduced to the field during her internship last summer with Vortex, a manufacturing company, when she worked in the metal injection molding lab making artificial hip and knee joints.
Bliven says what she liked best about her job was thinking on her feet to take care of problems. What she didn’t like was the somewhat mundane aspect of doing the same activities every day.
Bliven has not yet found an area of concentration for her future career, but knows that she does not want her job to be dull.
“No matter what I do, I’d like it to be somewhat variable. I don’t want to do the same thing every day,” Bliven said.
Another major part of Bliven’s engineering experience was becoming president of the new biomedical engineering club.The club has been volunteering with an organization called CardioStart, which conducts surgical missions to third-world countries to provide cardiovascular healthcare.
Bliven is working on forming a contract with CardioStart that will allow club members to test medical devices for their usability, and try to fix them if they don’t work.
“Club members get a chance to mess around with old medical equipment, which is kind of cool,” Bliven said.
Looking back on her four years at UP, Bliven says what she’s liked most was building a network of people around her who are interested in biomedical engineering, with whom she can share her passion.
Sophia Wuest, Intel
Sophia Wuest won’t move far away after graduation because she landed a job with Intel in Hillsboro as a product development engineer. Her job will involve testing products and ensuring they perform the functions they were designed to perform before they are mass-manufactured.
Wuest got the job offer from Intel last semester, and she will start working May 18. Until then, she will continue working as an intern for the company, one of several internships she has had during her four years at UP.
Last semester, Wuest worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and also had a summer internship in her home state of Hawaii with a local company called Treks Enterprises. Wuest believes her internships have helped her better understand material at school.
“I had a lot of supplemental information,” Wuest said. “Especially this year, I’ve noticed working at the Army Corps, I knew a lot of things from there, going into my classes.”
Getting a better understanding of engineering has been beneficial to Wuest, because her knowledge has been put to the test in her senior project.
“We’re building an autonomous robot, and it has to be able to solve a maze, starting at any
corner, and has to be able to find the middle,” she said.
While working on this project, Wuest and her teammates have run into hardware problems and other difficulties that have made the process frustrating. But Wuest believes that the challenging process has also been rewarding.
Daniel “Boomer” Fonken, Denali Gift Company
Daniel “Boomer” Fonken has an internship with Hewett, a construction company in Portland, where he does research on upcoming projects. Hewett offered Fonken a job, but he decided to postpone working as an engineer for now, and decided to move to Alaska to become a tour guide for the summer in Denali national park.
“I just wanted to get up there and have some fun before I get a real long-term job,” he said.
After he returns to Portland, Fonken hopes to secure an entry-level job as a designer. After working for four years under a licensed engineer, Hewett would pay Fonken to go back to graduate school.
Fonken still remembers visiting a bridge his grandparents had built and the pride his grandfather took in the work he had accomplished. This experience inspired Fonken to become a civil engineer.
“I would describe civil engineering as building stuff that’s not supposed to move,” Fonken said. This generally means constructing large structures like bridges, something concrete and visible to the general public.
Fonken likes the practicality of his branch of engineering. He describes himself as someone who likes physics more than theoretical mathematics, and he thinks building things is the perfect way for him to apply that strength.
As for long-term plans, Fonken hopes to follow in the footsteps of his grandparents, and at some point build a noteworthy project that he can look at with pride.
Christine Menges is a reporter for The Beacon. You can contact her at menges15@up.edu or on Twitter @ChristineyBird.
