Success Stories
Layne Clemen engineers success
By Bonnie Henderson
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Layne Clemen |
When Systems West sent one of its mechanical engineers to Lane Community College in May to consult on the campus energy system, it was a full circle for the young engineer. Four years earlier, Layne Clemen had been a student at LCC himself, studying engineering in preparation for transfer to Oregon State University. When he popped in to visit instructor Robert Thompson, Clemen wasn't a bit surprised to be greeted by name. "He remembers students," Clemen says with a smile.
Clemen was easy to remember. He was home-schooled as a child and started taking classes at LCC at the age of 17. An honors student while at LCC, he graduated from OSU in June 2008 with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and minors in chemistry and math. He started the job at Systems West within a month of graduation.
Clemen credits LCC's engineering transfer program and instructors Thompson and Cathy Miner for helping him succeed at OSU. "We came in much better prepared compared to a lot of other people," he recalls. "We really had a good foundation." Small class size was one reason; his LCC classes tended to number about 25 students compared with as many as 10 times that in comparable freshman and sophomore classes at OSU.
"It seemed like a lot of the kids there who started at OSU right after high school kind of got lost in the shuffle," Clemen says. That wasn't an option at LCC, he adds with a wry smile. "The teachers knew who you were, whether you liked it or not."
"Our students tend to do very well at the university," Thompson says. "As a matter of fact, often their grade point average goes up!" Every year about 25 students complete the engineering program and transfer to a four-year university. Thompson personally knows a number of engineering transfer students who left Lane County to complete their education and start careers and who later returned to establish themselves professionally and, in some cases, start their own businesses. Clemen is still in touch with about half of his LCC engineering classmates; two work for Boeing, one for a building contractor in Corvallis, and a fourth at an aeronautics firm in eastern Washington.
Clemen has a keen interest in sustainability and "green building" design and has been accepted into a doctoral program at the University of California at Davis. But he wants to build some industry experience first. With his LCC program, his bachelor's degree, his engineer-in-training certification and a year of work now behind him, he's on track to earn his professional engineer license in three years.
Lane Community College offers the first two years of a university-level engineering course of study. For more information, contact Robert Thompson in the Math Resource Center at (541) 463-5399.
