Pipeline Engineer/ Mentor to Young Girls – Mentor- Suzanne Dodson

Pipeline Engineer/ Mentor to Young Girls

 Mentor- Suzanne Dodson

 

screenshot-2016-10-07-13-14-30Suzanne graduated cum laude from the University of Tulsa in 2002 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemical Engineering. After graduation, she joined a division of the Williams Company that is now Magellan Midstream Partners where she is a Pipeline Integrity Engineer. Suzanne is also actively involved in encouraging young women to enter careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). She became a member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) while she was still in college and is a past section president & leadership coach. She was a founding member of TU Women’s Robotics and currently a Girl Scout Troop leader, volunteering with several all-girl FIRST Lego League robotics teams where she works with elementary aged girls to teach them the principals of engineering. Suzanne wants girls to learn at an early age that they can make a difference in the world with their ideas. Two of her teams were invited to the White House Science Fair in 2014 and 2015 and they’ve attended multiple state championships. Suzanne is also a former Board member of the Tulsa Engineering Foundation and a former Chair of TTC’s Pre-Engineering Program’s Industry Advisory Committee.

Suzanne shares the  life lessons she learned as she has pursued her engineering career.  She also talks about choices she made that allowed her to get her engineering degree without running up student loans. Consider there are more opportunities for scholarships in engineering than most other college majors and engineering students can also get well paying internships during the summer like Suzanne did. Once you graduate, engineers have the highest starting salaries of any undergraduate degree as well some of the highest projected lifetime earnings.

 

My Career Path

 Like many high school students, I had trouble deciding on a college major. Much of the advice I was given by guidance counselors involved talk of “finding your passion”, but at 17 years old I didn’t know for certain what my passion was. There were several things that I enjoyed, but were those my “passions”?

The two things that interested me the most were science and theater, so I was seriously looking at whether to be an engineer or a theater major. The best advice I received in high school came from my dad, who told me that it was a lot easier to have the kind of life I wanted if I became an engineer that did community theater on the side. If I instead opted to be a theater major it would be much tougher to find a way to incorporate my love of science into a hobby. That hit home and I chose engineering

LIFE LESSON #1 – Identify which of your “passions” are well suited for a hobby, and which are wellsuited for a career. Don’t choose a major just based on your salary… but weigh your future financial stability and job security alongside your passion for a chosen career path.    

I worked hard in high school and did better than average, but I was not at the very top of my class – I got more A’s than B’s, but not by much. I took several AP classes, but didn’t feel like I could take every AP class offered at my school and still maintain a decent GPA.

Based on scholarship & financial aid offers from the schools I applied to, my college choice came down to University of Oklahoma or University of Tulsa. While I got a full tuition scholarship at OU, the cost of living on campus meant I’d need to take out significant student loans. My scholarship offer at TU didn’t quite cover tuition, but I could live at home, work part time, and graduate with less debt. As difficult as it was to decide NOT to go away to college, I had to look at my future – it made more sense to live at home and graduate with a manageable amount of debt vs. racking up student loans just so I could live in the dorms.

LIFE LESSON #2 – Make decisions that take the long term view of your life. While I missed out on some of the ‘fun’ by not living in the dorm, my college loans were paid off within 5 years (and I still had plenty of fun in college). Several friends who opted to live in the dorms are STILL paying their loans off 15 years later.

When I graduated high school at age 17 I didn’t know a lot about what an engineer did other than it involved science and math. I showed up to enroll at the University of Tulsa, planning to list my major as “Engineering: Undecided”. The administrator helping with my enrollment said there was no “engineering undecided” code in the computer system, so I had to pick a major in order to complete my enrollment, or else enroll as “undecided” (meaning I’d have no roadmap for which classes to take in which order). In the span of 30 seconds I had to make a decision: I chose chemical engineering because I liked chemistry in high school. Fortunately most engineering degrees are flexible – while a “traditional” chemical engineering career might involve working on refinery design or a chemical plant, there are so many options to branch out beyond what you’re specifically taught in school. A mechanical engineer can take a chemical engineering job particularly if they have some on the job training and vice versa.

LIFE LESSON #3 – Sometimes you just have to make a decision, even if you don’t have all the information you’d like to have. If I had hated Chemical Engineering, I could have changed my major. But if I had instead opted for “Undecided” because I was afraid of making the wrong decision, I wouldn’t have taken the early classes that were prerequisites for other classes, and likely would have spent 5 years in college vs. 4 (racking up additional student debt).

When I was in college my toughest class was called Equilibrium Thermodynamics. After getting an F on my 2nd test in a row, I decided that I needed to drop the class rather than risking a blemish on my transcript (or losing my scholarship). I took a drop sheet in to my professor’s office for his signature, and he asked why I wanted to drop the class. I explained that I had failed the first 2 tests and there was no way I could pass the class at this point. He quietly turned around, pulled up a spreadsheet of all the grades in the class (covering names) and showed me that my score was in fact one of the top scores in the class. He planned to curve everyone’s grades at the end of the semester, but was going to leave people sweating until then so they’d study harder.

Prior to those 2 tests, virtually no one in the class asked questions during his lectures. I assumed that meant that everyone else understood the material and I was just too dumb to get it. After seeing where my grade ranked with other students, I started asking questions the very next week. Multiple classmates came up to me and thanked me for asking questions… they all thought they were the only ones that didn’t get the material!

Clearly many of us were struggling in this subject, so why was I so willing to give up, while none of my male peers were ready to drop the class? Studies have shown that if a girl struggles with a subject she thinks there is something innately wrong her and she just cannot do it. Yet a boy having equivalent trouble in a subject sees poor performance as something to get mad about, so he works harder (often trying to prove the teacher “wrong” about his performance in class). Women attribute success or failure to something innate and unchanging in their ability, whereas men tend to view their success or failure as a byproduct of their hard work. Young women need to recognize that they may have a tendency to underestimate their own abilities.

LIFE LESSON #4 – Don’t underestimate your own ability. You may think that you aren’t as smart as your peers… but maybe your peers are just as clueless as you are (but they hide their cluelessness well)!

I worked part time my freshman and sophomore year at an airport rent-a-car company. While any work experience is better than no experience on your resume, I knew that I needed experience related to my major at some point. I utilized TU’s career services and applied to several summer internship opportunitiesfor the summer after my sophomore year. After interviewing on campus with multiple companies, I got an offer with only one – a small drilling company in Houston. I was twenty years old and moved to Houston on my own, getting an apartment with a 3 month lease and renting furniture. I really enjoyed upstream oil & gas, drilling, and the people I worked were fantastic. However, I discovered I was not too fond of Houston’s 110º summer heat and non-stop traffic gridlock. It was a great experience, but when they made me an offer to return the following summer, I decided I was going to explore other options. Having 1 summer internship under my belt gave me relevant work experience and made me a more attractive candidate. I applied for ten summer internships the next summer (after my junior year), and got nine offers.

LIFE LESSION #5 – Any work experience is better than no work experience, and it gives you a stepping stone to better jobs. My job at a rent-a-car company showed that I was responsible, showed up to work on time and met sales goals. That landed me my first internship. And that first internship made me a more attractive candidate to the company I really wanted to work for when I applied for a 2nd internship. So get a part time job (any job!) while you’re a freshman in college – even if it’s just a few hours a week, it will open doors for you in the future!

I’m often asked by college students how to get an engineering summer internship. Students usually start thinking about summer employment during the spring semester, but that’s getting a really late start! Manycompanies are interviewing on campus as early as September for their internship opportunities for the following summer, 8 months in advance. Grades matter, but if your grades are just mediocre you need to do things that set you apart – don’t just join a club, become an officer if that club. Volunteer your time with a non-profit, join an intermural sport, or plan your sorority’s fall social. One antidote I love to share comes from a recruiter who visited numerous college campuses interviewing students for internships. He would throw away any resume with a perfect 4.0 GPA unless he saw something on it that indicated that person had interests outside of classwork. He was looking for a well-rounded candidate would be able to work collaboratively with people and fit into the company’s culture, and had found that the students who focused so hard on achieving a perfect 4.0 often failed to build their social and teamwork skills outside of the classroom. I would encourage everyone to sign up for activities in college that demonstrates you can work effectively in groups. The same applies to kids in high school. Volunteer for things so you can talk about how you worked in and organized groups. Be persistent when you are talking to recruiters and follow up with that hand written thank you note. It will count for a lot if you show you really want the internship.

You can prepare for your internship interview by thinking of situations where you’ve worked in a team – at work, a school project, a volunteer project, or planning an event with an organization. Think about things you did that showed teamwork, leadership, or creative problem solving. Most interviews will be behavioral based interview – you’ll be asked to identify a time when you worked in a team where things went well or didn’t go well. Having recently thought about several teamwork examples will give you multiple things to talk about that cast you in a positive light.

I mentioned I got 9 internship offers for the summer after my junior year… I took an offer from Williams, a company I had admired for years. I had a fantastic summer working in their project management group, managing (very small) projects involving adding clay to soil in a tank dike and overseeing design & construction of minor piping changes. When they offered me a full time position I eagerly accepted. I graduated in 2002 and started work at Williams… the same summer as the Enron scandal, which made the entire energy marketing & trading business implode. Williams stock plummeted based on “guilt by association” to the Enron debacle. A few months after I was hired, Williams started massive layoffs and they gave me a termination date.

LIFE LESSON #6 – You may love your company, and your boss may love you… but your COMPANY cannot love you back. Keep your options open, and maintain a good network of contacts. You never know when an unexpected layoff might occur.

At this point I was 21 years old and “employed” but looking at my termination date a few months in the future. I was still an employee until that date and I was determined to try to change the company’s mind.When I heard that one of the engineers staying on at Williams decided to move to another city, I made a point to speak to the manager of that group about why I would be a good fit. I knew my experience was minimal – a single summer working in the Project Management group on very tiny projects. I had to make a convincing argument for why they should fill the position with someone so inexperienced. Luckily, I had kept an “accomplishment log” so I could go back to my time as an intern and give specific examples of what I had done to add value to the company. Since the rest of the group was comprised of senior level engineers in their 50’s, I advocated for myself by making a case for why Williams should look at passing along “institutional knowledge” to the next generation of employees – I turned my relative youth andinexperience into a plus. I must have made a convincing argument, because I was given a position in the project management group… and avoided the layoff.

Life Lesson #7 – Advocate for yourself. Too many people assume that hard work will be recognized, they’ll be promoted if they deserve it, and they’ll be considered for a position without stating their interest in that position, but sometimes you have to advocate for yourself. No one will ever be a “perfect match” for a job opening and you may be missing some of the skills listed in a job description. You need to make a case for why you have other attributes that make you a good candidate.

I started out doing small, regulatory projects and worked up to larger projects where I was coordinating design engineers & construction crews, going out in the field a couple times a month to see what I was actually building. That was a good fit for me. I liked to get out of the office occasionally but couldn’t see myself wearing a hard hat & steel toed boots 5 days a week. Like the other project managers at my company, I always had an inspector on the site who was watching what the contractor was doing and calling me when there was a problem. I loved managing projects and would still probably be doing that if I hadn’t decided to have children.

I grew up in a home with a stay-at-home mom, and when I was pregnant with my first child I felt tremendous pressure to do the same (in hindsight, I put this pressure on myself). Yet I also loved my job and knew that I needed some mental stimulation each day. I decided that the ideal situation would be to cut back on my work hours, and I approached my boss about working part time. I was incredibly fortunate to have an open minded (and female) boss, but my company had never had any of their engineering staff transition to part-time before. My boss helped me rework my initial proposal to highlight not just the benefits for me, but the benefits to the company as well.

LIFE LESSON #8 – when making a request for anything, don’t frame it as what you want. Frame it as a 2 way street – how it benefits you AND benefits the company.

Several pregnant employees had recently quit to be stay-at-home moms. I was able to highlight that making part-time work an option would allow the company to maintain talent in the workplace, and would give it a family friendly reputation among young engineers.

I presented my proposal and waited to hear back. I was ready to negotiate on the number of hour per week, rate of pay, benefits, etc. To my surprise, they said yes to everything I had suggested with the one caveat that they needed someone with experience to move into a risk analysis position. While it was different from what I had previously done, I was thrilled to be able to add something new to my work experience. I worked part time for several years, returning to work (again in a new position) once my youngest daughter was in a K-4 program.

 

Women and the Engineering Profession

I think our society gives many subtle and unintentional signals to girls that discourage them from pursuing engineering. We tell them it’s OK to dream big and shoot for the stars, yet the “pink” aisle is full of dolls, toy kitchens & princess dresses, while the “blue” aisle is full of Lego spaceships, action figures, and firefighter costumes. Even the much praised “Lego Friends” line encourages girls to build a juice bar or mall kiosk, where half the pieces are decorative rather than something more challenging and substantive. When you take a look at the toys on the pink aisle, very few toys really encourage girls to be thinkers and to learn how things work.

Now that I’m a mother of 2 daughters, I’ve keenly aware of the deluge of media telling the girls to be pretty, sweet princesses that just want to boys to like them. That is why I wanted to work with programs that would begin working with girls at an early age so they start thinking past aesthetics and what looks pretty and realize that they can make a difference in the world with their ideas. I want my daughters and all girls to understand that what they have in their brain is so much more important than what’s looking back at them in the mirror. I also think that girls are more attracted to professions where they can see they can make a difference in peoples’ lives, which may be why so many women are in fields like nursing and teaching. The Girls Scout STEM programs (robotics in particular) are designed to show girls how engineers solve problems that can help people and make the world a better place.

My volunteer work through the Girl Scouts involves coaching/assisting with 4 robotics teams, mentoring new Girl Scout Robotics coaches, and trying to grow the robotics program here in Eastern Oklahoma. GSEOK started it’s first robotics team 7 years ago, and we’ve managed to grow it to 17 teams ranging in age from 5 year old kindergarteners (Daisies) through 8th grade “Cadettes”. We would eventually like to expand robotics offerings to high school girls as well.

The difficulty of the robotics challenge varies by age group, but all girls are given a challenge topic, where they have to identify a problem and then come up with a solution. A great example comes from a kindergarten team that I coached a couple of years ago (this team’s idea took them all the way to the White House Science Fair). That year the girls had the topic of education, and how to improve upon tools used in education. As they discussed education, they got concerned that people who were disabled could not turn pages in a book. While adults pointed out that an Amazon kindle might be a good solution, the girls loved physical books and wanted the disabled to also be able to enjoy the physical books. They decided they were going to invent a device that would turn pages for a disabled person. We got out the motorized Lego kit and they built a device that would turn the pages on a kid’s paperback book.

A huge part of the design/build process is letting the girls fail. The team’s initial device pretty much shredded the pages in the book instead of turning them (the motor also popped off and started flailing around until the girls could turn it off, smashing multiple parts of their Lego model in the process). As a coach of an all-girls team, it’s important that I don’t jump in an “fix the problem” when these things go wrong… that just fuels the girls belief that there’s something innately “wrong” with them and they aren’t smart enough to do it. Instead, we high five each other and I enthusiastically yell “Epic fail!!!”. Then we encourage the girls to sit down and look at the problem. What went wrong? What components caused the problem, and what components worked well? What components do they need to change? When they get stuck I may ask leading questions, like “Which gear might solve the problem, A or B?”. Ideally they’ll learn that problem solving is an iterative process – you learn from your mistakes, make changes, and move on.

I hope this early “Life Lesson” serves them well later on.

Each year our robotics teams focus on a different topic and a different problem. Another one of the problems my older girls were given was how to deal with all the trash people create. In our discussions, oneof the teams thought that gift-wrap was wasteful, and the girls got the idea that trash problem could be eliminated if wrapping paper exploded & disintegrated. One rule in our meetings is that there is no such thing as a bad idea. The girls thought about it, pointed out the obvious safety dangers, and started to think of ways to make it safer. That initial (rather unsafe) idea led them to consider other ways to eliminate the waste from wrapping paper. They now have “Patent Pending” status on their idea for Dissolving Bath Fizzie wrapping paper… and even got initial interest in their idea from the Hallmark Corp).

Another early life lesson for young girls: Don’t dismiss something as a “Bad Idea” until you’ve really examined it from every angle.

 

Making a Good Career Choice and Finding Opportunities

  • The “follow your passion” advice kids often get is usually from well-meaning adults. But kids normally hear they should do what is fun for them. They do not necessarily look at whether they are going to be doing something they are satisfied with each day and if they can also have the lifestyle they want. For example, if you are someone who is passionate about fixing old cars, maybe you can work as an engineer for Ford and have the resources to buy the old Corvette you wanted to work on over the weekend. You need to think about the larger picture of your life and all the things that contribute to how you are going to find happiness each day. So when choosing a career, first figure out what the difference is between what should be your career and what should be your passion.
  • While you may get lucky with that first engineering job and find you are doing something that you really love, understand that if you don’t like that job, it is easy to move and find something else. There is no stigma anymore if you jump around to 2-3 different jobs the first five years out of college, especially in the field of engineering.
  • Networking is also important for getting your first job and later finding other job opportunities. Networking is not about seeing how many business cards you can pass out or putting up a page on LinkedIn. You want to build relationships with people and give them insight into your personality and work ethic. As an example, I’ve done a lot of volunteer work with SWE over the years. Groups of professional women plan outreach programs for kids K – 12 and put together technical tours for our professional members – this gives me experience working with a lot of other members of the organization. If someone from that group sends me a resume, I can pass it along to a hiring manager, saying that I have worked with this person (in SWE), we planned an event together and I know they are responsible, have a good work ethic, etc.
  • You also should be aware that there are a wide variety or corporate cultures and you are not going to get much insight on this from the company’s website. For example, a lot of people have children or elderly parents where they need to take them to doctor’s appointments. Some companies will treat you as a professional and let you schedule these personal times as long as you get your work done while other are less flexible. Culture can also influence how you are going to dress every day and what kind of feedback you are going to get from your supervisor. Each company also has different ideas about how their employees are expected to socialize. Learning these things is difficult if the only person you have to ask is the person doing your job interview who is going to try and put the best face on the company. You need to talk to people who have worked there. This is another place networking can be helpful.

 

Summary

 Engineering is a career that not only pays well but is also one where you learn how to solve problems that can make real difference in the world. While a lot of people considering engineering get scared away by the math, many engineering jobs utilize a computer that does almost all of the calculations used by an engineer. You do have to understand the math to be able to work with the data generated by the computer, but most of your time will be spent solving problems and working collaboratively in groups (not doing math problems by hand). Being able to think creatively and solve problems are the most important thing you need to be able to do to be a successful engineer.

 

US Bureau of Labor Statistics for Engineers

 The median annual wage of all engineers in 2015 was $95,900. The top ten percent earned more than $150,800 and the bottom ten percent earned $52, 010.

Some of the highest paying careers in the world are found in engineering. Engineering is widely considereas one of the most lucrative and in demand career choices, with multiple engineering disciplines and job types, as well as salaries that can exceed $100k per year once the engineer has some experience behind them.  Engineering degrees make up 10 of the top 17 highest paid degrees at the time of this 2015 BLS survey.

Here are some recent starting salary statistics for engineers and other STEM grads:

http://www.naceweb.org/s01272016/stem-grads-earn-highest-starting-salaries.aspx

Many successful entrepreneurs are engineers because they are trained to know how to solve problems and make things.

 

 

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