by Siu F. Cheng
During our last class meeting, Ms. Lori L. Williams came to speak to us about her career at Sierra Pacific. Here are the lists about her background and three key points she made.
Background-
- graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering in 1983
- started to work for Sierra Pacific while she attended school as a student engineer
- has been with the company for 17+ years
Key Points-
- "change is good", she stressed this point a lot. She said that the chemical engineering field has a large variety and that one should frequently change jobs until they find one that they like.
- There are many roles that a chemical engineer can play in the chemical industry. Some examples are design plans, pilot plant training, control systems, environmental issues, safety and hazardous materials, process design and manufacturing.
- Engineers don't usually have people skills. They usually work in small groups of engineers and hardly have any exposure to actual hard laborers and workmen. Engineers who show that they have good people skills usually end up having the supervisory positions in a company.
Ms. Lori Williams gave a good look at the kinds of jobs and opportunities that are open to chemical engineers. She also showed that there are many opportunities in Reno and Nevada for this kind of work. I think that she provided the class a good example that graduates from the program at UNR have many opportunities for good positions in the industry.