Find your community in STLE

Dr. Ryan D. Evans, STLE President | TLT President's Report July 2022

STLE is a great place to grow, learn and become part of an amazing group of people.
 

The word “community” has different meanings to different people. Some immediately think about their neighborhood or a group of people within a short distance. Others think about a specific religious group, booster club, sports league or pub environment. I personally feel a deep sense of community during a music concert or sporting event when hundreds or thousands of people are all shouting, singing or clapping in unison. And, of course, we all know people who believe they exist for the sole purpose of creating a community in whatever context they find themselves—those otherwise known as “the life of the party.”

According to Dictionary.com, a community is “a social group whose members have something in common, such as a shared government, geographic location, culture, or heritage.”1 With that said, all the examples I mentioned are in fact “communities.” I am a certified introvert, proven repeatedly in workplace psychological tests usually intended for team building. I didn’t hate the COVID-19 pandemic work-from-home mode—at first. But after a few weeks, I start-ed to miss seeing people around the office and even small talk with them, which all but disappeared in scheduled video conferences. I can only imagine the struggles that the more extroverted people among us had during these past few years. On the other hand, this experience really made me think about the importance of finding “community” in not-so-obvious places, and how fulfilling even simple community experiences can be when you step back to appreciate them. My STLE volunteer obligations continued during the pandemic, and I discovered new value in them that perhaps I’d taken for granted for so many years prior.

Each of us joined the STLE community in different ways and for different reasons. I joined STLE because my first manager at The Timken Co., 2011 STLE P.M. Ku Award winner Harvey Nixon, encouraged me to attend previous STLE Cleveland, and now Canton, Local Section meetings as a training experience and to develop a sense of community in the not-so-glamorous world of machine and bearing lubrication. At the time, I had dual motivations with regards to STLE. I was starting a career at The Timken Co. but also had academic motivations since I was finishing my doctoral work from Case Western Reserve University part time while working full time. While the STLE local section meetings were fun and interesting, my sights were focused on participating at the STLE organizational level by presenting at STLE conferences and publishing papers in the Tribology Transactions and Tribology Letters journals.

My associations with fellow colleagues helped me get to where I am today. Beyond serving in several technical committee roles, my entry point to the high-level administrative committees was when my colleague STLE member Dr. Michael Kotzalas from The Timken Co. invited me to join the STLE Awards Committee as he rotated out of the chair position. Dr. Lewis Rosado from the U.S. Air Force led me to join the STLE Annual Meeting Program Committee, and STLE Life Member professor Farshid Sadeghi from Purdue University nominated me for the STLE Board of Directors. When STLE Past President Michael Anderson from Falex Corp. asked me to join the STLE Executive Committee, I was eager to volunteer. I witnessed the leadership of STLE Past President Peter Drechsler from The Timken Co. on the Executive Committee and looked up to him throughout his journey and the example he set.

We now stand at an inflection point as to what the concept of “community” means to our society. Three years ago, many of us would call into teleconferences but didn’t even know if our laptop or mobile device had a camera. Video conferencing was not a thing. Now, I’m confident to say that most of us have become experts at video conferencing. Others had to report to work but take additional protective precautions to continue working hands-on, site critical jobs. Now and going forward, the STLE community needs to wrestle with how we maintain and enhance our community as we blend old ways and new ways of communicating and interacting. Will we conserve the old ways of in-person meetings, evolve to a more centralized approach for content delivery over video conferences exclusively or settle on some compromise between in-person and online engagements?

These are not easy questions to answer. As 2022-2023 STLE President, I believe we need a thoughtful evolution on these fronts rather than an aggressive revolution. I also recognize that there are major situational differences among the ways subcommunities within STLE operate. They may need to have some autonomy to decide the best ways to engage. Call me old-fashioned, but in my 20 years of STLE involvement, my greatest and most lasting memories always occurred at in-person events. I encourage you to ponder on this question yourself. I welcome constructive opinions and feedback on decisions surrounding in-person versus virtual community experiences throughout my term as president. I am passionate about making STLE as welcoming and inclusive to all who are interested in driving progress for our field and strengthening our community of tribologists and lubrication engineers.

I encourage you to engage our STLE community in a new way this year. STLE offers more virtual options today than ever. We have webinars, a new online Industry Insight discussion series for STLE members and an STLE podcast. We still see the value in an in-person annual meeting but are rethinking the notion of what technical proceedings should look like from this and future meetings. We created a special-topic in-person and virtual conference on electric vehicles in 2021 called Tribology and Lubrication for E-Mobility and are planning it again for Nov. 30-Dec. 1. It’s also about time we engage for another cutting-edge Tribology Frontiers Conference.

I’m excited by the ways that STLE Local Sections have adopted virtual meeting approaches that increase their draw beyond normal geographic limitations. Whether you are a local section leader, a college student, a valued exhibitor or someone with a goal of gaining an STLE certification, please recognize the various STLE subcommunities you are in. What can you do to strengthen them for your own and STLE’s benefit? It was The Timken Co. that introduced me to STLE, but it was non-Timken relationships that I built within STLE communities that kept me coming back and led me to STLE presidency.

Thank you for allowing me to be your president for the coming year, and I look forward to working with all of you in the STLE community.

REFERENCE
1. www.dictionary.com/browse/community

Dr. Ryan Evans is director of R&D at The Timken Co. in North Canton, Ohio. You can reach him at ryan.evans@timken.com.