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 mission designs.
She continued to work on the firm throughout her first 12 months as an undergraduate on the Stevens Institute of Expertise, 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 schooling program, which permits her to rotate three full-time work placements throughout the second quarter of the varsity 12 months via August. She returns to highschool full time in September with a extra spectacular résumé.
For her tutorial achievements, Dion acquired an IEEE Energy & Vitality Society scholarship this 12 months. The PES Scholarship Plus Initiative rewards undergraduates who at some point are more likely to construct inexperienced applied sciences and alter the way in which we generate and make the most of energy. Dion acquired US $2,000 towards her schooling.
She says she’s wanting ahead to networking with different scholarship recipients and IEEE members.
“Studying from different individuals’s tales and seeing myself in them and the place my profession might 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 convey her alongside to conferences and educate her in regards to the development trade.
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 might carry round a pocket book all over the place I went, and I took notes on the whole lot,” she says. “My workforce 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 very best 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 supply and supported a crucial mission on the agency: designing an underground energy distribution and conduit system within the U.S. Virgin Islands to interchange overhead energy traces. The underground system may reduce energy loss after hurricanes.
Expert in AutoCAD software program, she contributed to {the electrical} design. Dion labored straight with the senior electrical designer and the president of the corporate, and she or he 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 via Stevens, which introduced her to the Lengthy Island Rail Street, in New York, via HNTB, an infrastructure design firm in Kansas Metropolis, Mo. She accomplished an eight-month task on the LIRR, aiding the traction energy and communications workforce in DC electrical system design for a significant capability enchancment mission 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 prepare tracks and needed to ask somebody on the workforce to stroll me via the whole lot I wanted to know, all the way down to the fundamentals.”
Dion describes how they spent two hours going via 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 monitor.
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 position pursuits her due to its concentrate on investigating what went incorrect when an engineering mission failed.
“My dad taught me to be 1 % higher every day.”
“It’s a profession path I had by no means identified 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 supplies skilled testimony in courtroom.
Dion joined IEEE in 2020 to construct her engineering community. She is getting ready to graduate from Stevens subsequent 12 months, 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 vitality, Dion is taking enterprise programs. She figures she would possibly at some point observe in her father’s entrepreneurial path.
“My dad is my largest supporter in addition to my largest challenger,” she says. “He’ll all the time ask me ‘Why?’ to problem my considering and assist me be the very best I may be. He’s taught me to be 1 % higher every day.” She provides that she will go to him every time she has an engineering query, pulling from his many years of expertise within the trade.
Due to her background—rising up across the electrical trade—she has been much less intimidated when she is the one girl in a gathering, she says. She finds that being a girl in a male-dominated trade is a chance, she says, including that there’s a lot of assist and camaraderie amongst girls within the subject.
Whereas excelling academically, she can also be a starter on the varsity volleyball workforce at Stevens. She has performed the game since she was within the seventh grade. Her athletic background has taught her vital abilities, she says, together with methods to lead by instance and the significance of guaranteeing the complete workforce 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 very best I can.”
