The Engineering Experience

Posted on February 24, 2015 By: Heather Danielle Render is an Ohio native majoring in Construction Engineering and Management with minors in Engineering Leadership, Organizational Leadership, and Supervision. She first became interested in engineering in high school when she took a course called Engineering and Design. Her high school Physical Science teacher was a Purdue Grad and inspired her to attend Purdue. Danielle is currently the second Vice President of the National   Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and an ambassador for the College of Engineering. She has been an intern for Turner Construction Company, M.A. Mortenson Construction, and has previously been a student manager for the Purdue University Women’s Basketball team. After graduating she plans to obtain a Master’s of Science in Engineering Management and an MBA. Her ultimate goal is to be an executive manager for a company and make a difference in people lives. Danielle mantra is: “Even if you only touch one lif...

As we all know, February is Black History Month. Over the course of the month we will spotlight 3 present and future makers/great individuals who have helped, progressed, and are continuing to embody the great legacy of African Americans. Today's feature is a Purdue Alum, Cassandra Alston who received her BSME in 1988. Cassandra Alston is a native of New Jersey and currently resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she is employed as the Executive Director, Global Workforce Diversity, Johnson Controls Incorporated. Alston received her bachelor’s of science in mechanical engineering from Purdue in 1988, where she was also captain of the women’s basketball team. In her role as the executive director for global workforce diversity, she develops and manages diversity initiatives across all business units for the Johnson Controls. Her work is focused on initiatives in diversity recruiting, retention, and engagement as well as the development of sustainable infrastructure and processes....

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Ashley Purdue has a great reputation when it comes to its career fairs.   Two really big ones for engineers are Industrial Roundtable (IR) in the fall and Expo Career Fair in the spring.   Last Tuesday, I went to the Expo Career Fair. Compared to IR, Expo is a bit smaller; for example, IR is two days long, whereas Expo is only one day.   In addition, fewer companies come to Expo to IR, but that is totally ok.   Personally, I liked the smaller setting because it was less stressful.   From my own experience I feel like there’s a lot more pressure on IR than Expo, so Expo was a way less stressful and nerve racking experience for me.   To prep for Expo, I spent the weekend before it fine tuning my resume and researching companies that I wanted to speak to.   I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of companies looking for Environmental and Ecological Engineers, because since we are so small and new, we u...

Posted on February 5, 2015 by LilyAnn Peterson Gapinski  As current students, one question we get asked very often is “why did you choose Purdue?” We decided to ask our volunteers this question, and here are some of the answers we received:  “I liked the flexibility of the First-Year Engineering program at Purdue. I started here with a basic idea of engineering, and was able to explore many different parts and see which discipline best matched my career goals.”  - Emily, Chemical Engineering  “I chose to come to Purdue because of the great engineering programs, but also because it is 5 ½ hours from my home. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and go somewhere where I knew literally no one, and I am so glad I did! Purdue is such a welcoming place and the people really care about individual students. There are numerous ways to get involved and so much support, especially from the Women in Engineering Program. Even though I came here not knowing...