 Robin Gnerlich
Ink Development Engineer
Lexmark International
Lexington, KY
 |
 B.S. - Chemical
Engineering, Purdue University |
 |
Ink Development Engineer |
 |
"Take part in a
summer internship or a co-op. What you do in school often isn't
very similar to what you will be doing later." |
Q: How did you become
interested in chemical engineering?
Gnerlich:
Well, my father is a
mechanical engineer. So I probably got a little bit of an idea for what to
major in. When I was in high school, I really liked chemistry and math,
and I had an idea what he did in his job, but I wasn't so sure that I
wanted to do exactly that. So I decided that chemical engineering would be
a good combination.
Q: Did you find college
challenging?
Gnerlich:
It's always challenging, but I
think it's because there is a lot of work. Some classes are more difficult
than others, but most of the time it's just having to do a lot of homework
and having a lot of tests and quizzes. You'll find that it will change as
you get older. Your freshman year is a lot of busy work, and then you
start to enjoy it more when you get to your senior year, because you see
why you're studying this.
Q:
Did you have any co-op experiences in college?
Gnerlich:
Yeah, I had a summer internship at a chemical plant and they made
synthetic rubber. It was a different environment than I'm in now. It was
mostly manufacturing and not a lot of development work. It was also a
smaller company. There were about 300 people or so, as opposed to here
where there's probably about 5,000. So I knew everyone that I worked with
and the environment was just a lot different than it is here.
Q: How did you find this
job?
Gnerlich:
Well, I went to Purdue and they have a really good placement center. What
they do is post companies that are coming to interview on campus, and you
sign up for your interviews. Lexmark had come up to recruit on campus, so
I signed up for an interview with them but I didn't get my interview
because they pick by lottery. Later on in the year, I'd had a few other
interviews with companies, I saw that they had placed an ad in the paper
at home. So I applied again, they gave me a call back, and I came here
on-site for an interview.
Q:
Do you feel your undergraduate education prepared you for the real world?
Gnerlich:
Yes. Mostly with chemistry and
math, because this environment is different from a chemical engineering
job in a chemical plant. But overall, school prepares you to be able to
learn later. All the things that you take part in in school are going to
help you later on.
Q: Do you see yourself
staying in the chemical engineering field?
Gnerlich:
Yes, I think so, because one
thing about chemical engineering is it's a very diverse field. If you
change your mind and decide that you don't like what you're doing, you can
move into anything. I think that when employers look at candidates and see
that they have a technical degree and a certain set of skills, the
employer will be more willing to develop and train that employee for
whatever job they want to move into.
Download Full Profile as PDF
|
|
