Mentorship, education and local sections
By Jack McKenna, STLE President | TLT President's Report July 2024
Getting involved with STLE will benefit you and your STLE community.
I, like many of you, have had the privilege of listening to some incredible women and men at past STLE annual meetings share their thoughts on what they want to accomplish in the year they were president of this great organization. Maureen Hunter spoke of first getting involved as a student at Penn State and taking the road less traveled. Martin Webster channeled his inner Dr. Who. Dave Sheetz, Mike Anderson and Mike Duncan thanked the members of the STLE Chicago Section where they, like me, got their start with STLE. In these speeches, the incoming president lays out their vision for where they want to help guide the society in the next 12 months. I know better than to think my personal vision for the next 12 months can have a major impact on an organization that is celebrating its 80th year.
What I do want to do is make some important thank yous and talk about mentorship. First, I want to start at home and thank my wife, Barb, and our four kids Patrick, Nora, Michael and Charlie. Doing volunteer work is about personal sacrifice, and sometimes that means missing things—birthdays, anniversaries, feeding the kids, putting them to bed and so on. If you are lucky and have the support of a willing family, it can make the volunteer experience much easier. I also need to thank Jim Hanesworth, my former boss at Sea-Land Chemical Co., for showing me what STLE is, what I can do for STLE and what it might do for me. I also want to mention the late Jerry Lepinske of Tower Oil as the first person to try to explain to me what STLE is, and another person I have to thank is Dick Henke of Ergon who introduced me to Sea-Land Chemical.
Back to the present, I’d like to thank Hong Liang, Kevin Delaney, Steffen Bots, Bill Anderson and Ryan Evans for working on the STLE Executive Committee with me. I should also give thanks to STLE Past Presidents Paul Hetherington and Ken Hope for showing me the ropes, and STLE Past Presidents Dave Scheetz and Mike Duncan for setting me on this path. I want to thank all those members of the STLE Chicago Section, past and present, who taught me so much about how to be a good volunteer, how to run a meeting and all the other skills you can apply to your real job as well. I do have to give big thanks to Sea-Land Chemical Co. for all the support it has given on this path I have taken to today. I would not be STLE president today if not for this outstanding organization. I’d also like to thank Jennifer Altstadt, CEO of Sea-Land Chemical, for her ongoing support of my volunteer activities.
I would like to thank the STLE staff and our former executive director, Ed Salek, to whom we all owe thanks for being such a good steward for us over the last 25 years. Rebecca Lintow, STLE executive director, has a tall task ahead, but I am sure she will do an outstanding job. She is off to a great start.
These few people I mentioned have served as mentors to me in some form. I want to encourage each of you to reflect on how you too can be a mentor to someone who is perhaps just starting out on their personal STLE voyage. Gently suggest to someone you work with to consider taking a role in an STLE local section or joining a committee—or at the least attend the STLE annual meetings. This volunteerism is the very lifeblood of our organization, and as we continue to grow for another 80 years, it depends on your ongoing commitment.
I want to mention some goals I have during my STLE presidency, and they are to provide support to local sections and our education and certification work. For many STLE members, in the last 80 years, local sections were the STLE to them. When Walter D. Hodson founded this organization in 1944, it was with the goal of creating a place where local networks could be enabled for lubrication engineers. The exchange of best practices and education continues to this day led by volunteers in sections around the world. If you are not a member of a local section, find out about your local section and get involved. Both you and your local STLE community will benefit.
Education and certification are the core of STLE today. People sometimes ask me: What is STLE? I tell them it is an organization that provides education on a wide variety of topics related to tribology and lubrication. It does this through formal training courses, in person and online. It also provides testing and certifications to ensure that those who have taken part in the educational offerings have retained enough knowledge to gain STLE’s important Certified Lubrication Specialist™ (CLS), Certified Oil Monitoring Analyst I and II™ (OMA I and II) and Certified Metalworking Fluids Specialist ™ (CMFS) certifications.
To those who attended the STLE Annual Meeting & Exhibition in May, thank you for being there. There is an old saying in Chicago where I and the STLE hail from, and it is, “I know a guy.” Perhaps today this should be, “I know a person.” But what it means is, I can help you, or if I can’t, I can find someone who can. Let us all embrace this Chicago spirit and be that “person,” and be there to help each other as we strive to move forward toward another 80 years.
Jack McKenna is vice president of corporate accounts for Sea-Land Chemical Company located in Cleveland, Ohio, and is based in Elmhurst, Ill. You can reach him at jack.mckenna@sealandchem.com.