Success Stories
Graduate
Lands Exciting Engineering Job
by
Gloria Biersdorff
Angela
Cook's career shot upward like a rocket even before she completed her
bachelor of science degree with honors from Oregon State University in
March. The 2000 graduate of Lane's engineering transfer program accepted
a job with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.
in February, and now works in a spacious, windowed office surrounded by
the San Francisco Bay hills in one of the nation's premiere research laboratories.
Cook, 22, says the most compelling aspect of her work as a mechanical design engineer for the Defense Technology Engineering Division is "the fact that it's classified." She provides engineering support for a program focused on extending the life span of the W80 nuclear weapon, among other responsibilities.
"There are many super-smart folks working here and I hope to learn as much as I can from their engineering and career successes, and eventually make them my own," says Cook, who plans to begin working toward her master's in mechanical engineering this summer through a distance learning program offered by one of California's universities such as Stanford, Berkeley, Chico or Davis. LLNL will fund her education.
OSU engineering professor Bob Paasch recommended Cook for the position. Paasch has worked as a consultant for LLNL since 1990, performing classified work on the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons.
"Angie
is very, very bright, inquisitive, creative, and a fierce competitor.
She also has very strong people skills," says Paasch, who served
as Cook's faculty advisor when she was the 2002-03 secretary/treasurer
of OSU's society of automotive engineers.
Paasch says he is impressed with the caliber of students coming to OSU's
engineering program from LCC. "My experience with Lane students has
been very good. They seem to be well prepared, with a strong foundation
in math and engineering science."
Cook, who had been a Thurston High School cheerleader, admits she didn't
know what an engineer did, exactly, when she enrolled at Lane as an undeclared
major in fall 1998. "I took French, keyboarding ... classes I liked.
I happened to take calculus," she says. "Math had been my strongest
subject in high school." Engineering instructor Robert Thompson encouraged
Cook to consider the engineering transfer program. The following term
she enrolled, and persevered through the rigorous coursework with the
support of Thompson, engineering instructor Cathy Miner, and others who
recognized Cook's talent and potential.
Miner says she remembers calling Cook into her office and saying, "You know you're good at this, don't you?"
"I think what it really takes for someone to realize what they're capable of, is for someone else to notice it for them and tell them," says Cook. "The instructors at LCC noticed; they brought it to my attention."
Cook, whose passion is space and aeronautics, is nevertheless content for now pursuing the down-to-earth dream of buying a first home for herself and her dog Zeke, now that she earns an annual salary of $64,800.
For more
information on Lane's engineering transfer program, call the Science Division
office at 463-5446, or visit: http://staff.lanecc.edu/~jamies/EngBrochure.html
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