Things I should have learned in eighth grade
Edward P. Salek, CAE, Executive Director | TLT Headquarters Report June 2011
Expected and unexpected encounters at a high-school career fair.
Everyone in our industry benefits when STLE helps develop future professionals. The society is broadening its suite of products aimed specifically at this demographic.
I am reasonably sure my eighth-grade curriculum during the late 1960s at John W. Garvy elementary school here in Chicago did not include the study of viscosity. Looking back some 40 years later, that actually would have been kind of useful given my eventual career direction, but that’s a story for another occasion.
The point of this month’s column is to report some expected and unexpected aspects of STLE’s recent participation in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Career Fair hosted at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., a far western Chicago suburb. STLE was one of more than 50 exhibitors at an evening event in April that attracted hundreds of high-school and junior high-school students and their parents from across the Chicago region.
Immediate Past President Dave Scheetz (ExxonMobil Lubricants & Specialties Co.) And I worked the STLE booth. I have to say that we got what we expected during three hours of conversation that made us feel great about our organization and profession. More important, we earned the satisfaction of helping students discover how to turn their academic interests into a possible career choice.
What we did not expect was an encounter with a very earnest young lady who visited our booth with her dad, spotted a pile of ExxonMobil viscosity charts on the literature table and reacted with more enthusiasm than a viscosity chart normally generates! It turned out that her eighth-grade class was about to study viscosity as part of their science curriculum, and she had stumbled upon a golden opportunity to acquire a great working tool. Dave and I were taken aback for a moment but did not miss our golden opportunity. It is safe to say that this class is now well informed about the fundamentals of lubrication thanks to one of our many valuable and supportive STLE Corporate Members.
While this encounter was surprising and impressive, it was only one of several that stuck in my mind based on the engagement and enthusiasm of the student visitors. Four of the other people Dave and I met included a serious young man who wanted to blend his technical interests with an entrepreneurial spirit (the next Bill Gates?), a pair of classmates who had complementary interests in finance and engineering (a partnership that hopefully goes better than the Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook saga) and a young lady with an idea for an advanced digital camera who is now refining her thinking after discovering the tribology of the eye through one of our STLE podcasts. Remember, folks, these are high-school students.
STLE’s leadership is firmly committed to engaging in this sort of activity as a means of fulfilling the purposes defined by our mission statement. The STEM Career Expo was just one of many programs that represent a worthy investment of financial and volunteer resources at the national level. We recognize and appreciate the fact that many of our individual member companies and local sections put their resources behind similar efforts to promote the profession to students in a variety of ways. If the students Dave and I met at STEM were asked for an opinion on the value of these efforts, I am certain they’d say, “This is what we need. Keep it up!”
Still, the question remains, “Will any of our young friends grow up to be STLE members?” That’s obviously an unknown at this point (although our viscosity fan might be the likely favorite!). But there is no doubt that organizations like STLE have a unique opportunity to support the development of our current members and to demonstrate a career path for future professionals that will yield positive and long-term results for all involved.
You can reach Certified Association Executive Ed Salek at esalek@stle.org.