 Maria
Angelo
Area Consultant
DuPont
Deepwater, NJ
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 B.S. - Chemical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University |
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Area consultant, supporting the manufacturing process, the wastewater
treatment process at the plant. |
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"Just stick with it. The coursework is hard, but it pays off in the end.
Chemical engineers are still in demand." |
Angelo:
"I'm an area consultant. Basically, I'm supporting the manufacturing
process, the wastewater treatment process at the plant, and I'm also on
special assignment for some work we're doing plant-wide for waste
minimization. In this particular assignment, my daily function is the
special project that we're looking at waste minimization across the plant
or reduction of waste loading to the treatment plant. So we're actually
going into the process, the manufacturing areas and looking at what they
generate, how they generate it, and how it's treated, and whether that
makes the most sense."
Q: How did college prepare you
for your job responsibilities in Michigan?
Angelo:
It didn't get me ready for it
technically, because it's a totally different skill set. I had to learn
the regulations on the job. I got thrown into the environmental
coordinator position, and it was up to me to understand and learn what was
going on. From an academic perspective, the chemical engineering
background helped a lot because, one of the big things that you're dealing
with in environmental is waste generation. Well, it's really hard to
understand waste generation if you don't understand how the process is
generating the waste. My chemical engineering background really provided
that enhanced understanding of the processes. To me, college doesn't
necessarily teach you an academic specialty. It teaches you how to think
and how to learn.
Q: Can you elaborate on how you
picked up on the legislation job requirements?
Angelo:
Trial by fire. When I first
got the job, I tried to read regulations and absorb them. Well, that's
really hard to do. For me, the easier way to learn the regulations was as
people came to me with questions, I'd research the answer to their
questions, that way I would absorb the part of the regulation that they
needed to know along with the things that weren't applicable that I waded
through to get the answer. I just absorbed everything much more easily
that way. I learned by researching questions and getting to know people
and learning from them.
Q: What did you do during college
that helped prepare you for your work as a chemical engineer?
Angelo:
It actually goes back a little
further than my freshman year. When I was in high school, I wanted to be a
chemistry major. Then I participated in a program the summer between my
junior and senior year, that gave me the information that caused me to
choose chemical engineering as my career path. So, I knew my senior year I
wanted to go into chemical engineering. Through my four years in college,
the summer assignments I took were the things that prepared me the best.
That would be the thing that I would recommend the most to college
students: If you can get into a co-op program, do it. If you can't get
into one, find summer jobs that are in industry or find out if there are
summer intern programs you can get involved in, because not only does it
give you a flavor for industry and how it works, but it also helps you
know whether you want to stay in that field or get additional schooling in
a different field. When I was a sophomore, I thought I wanted to get a
master's degree in biomedical engineering. Then, I worked at Air Products
as a summer student and realized that I didn't want to get a master's
degree, I wanted to work in industry. That internship shifted my thinking,
and that was really valuable.
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