Many youngsters take a job at a restaurant or retail retailer, however Megan Dion received a head begin on her engineering profession. At 16, she landed a part-time place at FXB, a mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering firm in Chadds Ford, Pa., the place she helped create and optimize undertaking designs.
She continued to work on the firm throughout her first yr as an undergraduate on the Stevens Institute of Know-how, in Hoboken, N.J., the place she is learning electrical engineering with a focus in energy engineering. Now a junior, Dion is a part of the five-year Stevens cooperative training program, which permits her to rotate three full-time work placements throughout the second quarter of the varsity yr by means of August. She returns to high school full time in September with a extra spectacular résumé.
For her educational achievements, Dion obtained an IEEE Energy & Power Society scholarship this yr. The PES Scholarship Plus Initiative rewards undergraduates who in the future are more likely to construct inexperienced applied sciences and alter the best way we generate and make the most of energy. Dion obtained US $2,000 towards her training.
She says she’s trying ahead to networking with different scholarship recipients and IEEE members.
“Studying from different folks’s tales and seeing myself in them and the place my profession could possibly be in 10 or 15 years” motivates her, she says.
Gaining hands-on expertise in energy engineering
Dion’s early publicity to engineering got here from her father, who owned a business electrical development enterprise for 20 years, and sparked her curiosity within the subject. He would carry her alongside to conferences and train her in regards to the development business.
Then she was in a position to acquire on-the-job expertise at FXB, the place she shortly absorbed what she noticed round her.
“I’d carry round a pocket book in all places I went, and I took notes on the whole lot,” she says. “My crew knew they by no means must clarify one thing to me twice.”
“If I’m going to do one thing, I’m going to do it the most effective I can.”
She gained the belief of her colleagues, and so they requested her to proceed working with them whereas she attended faculty. She accepted the provide and supported a crucial undertaking on the agency: designing an underground energy distribution and conduit system within the U.S. Virgin Islands to exchange overhead energy strains. The underground system may reduce energy loss after hurricanes.
Expert in AutoCAD software program, she contributed to {the electrical} design. Dion labored immediately with the senior electrical designer and the president of the corporate, and he or she helped ship standing updates. The expertise, she says, solidified her resolution to change into an influence engineer.
After finishing her stint at FXB, she entered her first work placement by means of Stevens, which introduced her to the Lengthy Island Rail Highway, in New York, by means of HNTB, an infrastructure design firm in Kansas Metropolis, Mo. She accomplished an eight-month task on the LIRR, aiding the traction energy and communications crew in DC electrical system design for a significant capability enchancment undertaking for commuters within the New York metropolitan space.
Engaged on a railroad job was out of her consolation zone, she says, however she was up for the problem.
“In my first assembly with the agency, I used to be in shock,” she says. “I used to be taking a look at practice tracks and needed to ask somebody on the crew to stroll me by means of the whole lot I wanted to know, right down to the fundamentals.”
Dion describes how they spent two hours going by means of every kind of drawing produced, together with third-rail sectionalizing, negative-return diagrams, and conduit routing. Every sheet included 15 to 30 meters of a 3.2-kilometer part of observe.
What Dion has appreciated most in regards to the work placement program, she says, is studying about area of interest areas inside energy and electrical engineering.
She’s now at her second placement, at structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti in New York Metropolis, the place she is diving into forensic engineering. The function pursuits her due to its deal with investigating what went improper when an engineering undertaking failed.
“My dad taught me to be 1 p.c higher every day.”
“It’s a profession path I had by no means recognized about earlier than,” she says. Thornton Tomasetti investigates when one thing goes awry throughout the development course of, determines who is probably going at fault, and gives professional testimony in courtroom.
Dion joined IEEE in 2020 to construct her engineering community. She is getting ready to graduate from Stevens subsequent yr, after which plans to pursue a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering whereas working full time.
The significance of management and enterprise abilities
To spherical out her expertise and experience in energy and power, Dion is taking enterprise programs. She figures she may in the future comply with in her father’s entrepreneurial path.
“My dad is my greatest supporter in addition to my greatest challenger,” she says. “He’ll all the time ask me ‘Why?’ to problem my considering and assist me be the most effective I will be. He’s taught me to be 1 p.c higher every day.” She provides that she will be able to go to him every time she has an engineering query, pulling from his a long time of expertise within the business.
Due to her background—rising up across the electrical business—she has been much less intimidated when she is the one lady in a gathering, she says. She finds that being a lady in a male-dominated business is a chance, she says, including that there’s a lot of assist and camaraderie amongst ladies within the subject.
Whereas excelling academically, she can also be a starter on the varsity volleyball crew at Stevens. She has performed the game since she was within the seventh grade. Her athletic background has taught her necessary abilities, she says, together with methods to lead by instance and the significance of guaranteeing the whole crew is supported and dealing properly collectively.
Dion’s aggressive nature received’t enable her to carry herself again: “If I’m going to do one thing,” she says, “I’m going to do it the most effective I can.”
