Meeting with Young Engineers

On March 9th, 2007, a group of engineers (Celia Hung, Roger Liu, David Soohoo, and Eric Wong) came to talk to us about their careers. Celia is an integration engineer and Roger is a computer engineer, both working at Intel Company. David is an electrical engineer and Eric is a computer engineer, both from Raytheon Company.

Discussions at the meeting made it clear that mathematics was important in any engineering field. Mathematics is the language of engineering, and just like any ‘foreign’ language, it takes practice to master it. For those who are interested in becoming engineers, they can prepare themselves by taking advanced mathematics courses in high school.

To become an engineer, you would need at least a bachelor’s degree. Roger said that work experience is also extremely important. Most of what you learn to do on the job comes from hands-on experience that can be gained from internships and jobs. He advised us to seek out internships to gain hands-on experience during college to prepare for becoming an engineer.

We asked the engineers if they need to do any public speaking in their job. David told us that he occasionally would present to a group of people about a project that he is working on. All four of the engineers agreed that public speaking is an important skill to learn and apply to any job. As you know, most people are afraid of public speaking, but it is a skill that can be mastered with practice (just like mathematics).

We also discussed the career challenges for women in the engineering field. There are a lot more men in the engineering field than women. However, the four engineers encouraged all of us (who are all young women) to not be turned off by that if engineering is a career we want to pursue. Eric said, “Do not just do what a follower does, if you see a college with a smaller percent of female students, and the college is your dream school, please don’t give it up. Just do what you want to do!” Celia, who is the only female engineer in the group, told us that it is important to not take things personally. Celia told us these inspiring words: “In college, there’ll be many times you’ll want to give up, but don’t!” With incredible ambition, girls can achieve a goal that boys can.

After the meeting, we talked to the four engineers individually to learn more about their specific engineering specialties. We are really thankful to the four engineers for sharing their experiences with us and giving us helpful advice.