Electrical Engineer Kallie Lyon ’20 Discovers Her Path Forward
Very rarely does a person know who they are and who they want to be when they’re 18 years old. No matter the destination, the road to self-discovery often involves speed bumps and U-turns — a sentiment shared by many college students as they look to the future. It’s a journey that electrical engineer Kallie Lyon ’20 can relate to.
When Kallie was younger, she dreamed of taking the stage as a famous singer — or crunching numbers as an actuary like her mom. By the time she was making her college choice, however, she wanted to explore majors in English and engineering. Although uncertain of the exact path she would take, she didn’t want to change the location of her studies. So, in choosing a college, the prospect of transferring was out of the question.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to major in engineering or English. I didn’t want to have to transfer schools if I ended up changing my major either, so both programs needed to be good. And I also really wanted to go to a small, liberal arts school,” Kallie says. “There were very few colleges that checked all those boxes. Valpo did,” she exclaims.
As soon as she stepped foot on campus, Kallie knew this was the place she could see herself spending the next four years of her life. By the start of her first semester, she was enrolled in Valpo’s nationally recognized College of Engineering — where more decisions and opportunities awaited. Valpo offers several engineering pathways, including computer, environmental, and mechanical engineering, and bioengineering, among others. For rising engineers with a broad range of interests, it can be hard to narrow down where their true passions lay. “I went in thinking I wanted to major in civil engineering. I quickly found out that wasn’t for me,” Kallie says. That’s where our Fundamentals of Engineering (GE 100) course comes in.
About half of all incoming engineering students are unsure of their major and are admitted as undecided engineers. From there, first-year students have two semesters to explore all of the engineering programs in GE 100, allowing them to make an experienced decision on their major.
“I was dead set on civil engineering until we got to that specific unit… I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think I can do this for the rest of my life.’ And then we got to the electrical engineering unit and I thought, ‘Okay, this is something I could get into,’” Kallie explains. “Then, second semester, I took Fundamentals of Computer and Electrical Engineering (EC 100), and went deeper into all the different areas of electrical engineering. It’s one of my favorite classes I’ve taken to this day; the hands-on experience was so interesting and led me to choose a major that hadn’t even been on my list originally,” she adds.
From there, Kallie excelled in her studies on and off campus. She built a soccer-playing robot, studied the engineering behind Disney World’s magic, and flourished in both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and IEEE Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN) — two honor societies for Beacon engineers. She served as an automation intern at ArcelorMittal, a global steel organization, going into her junior year, then as a programming intern for Eli Lilly and Company, a medicine company, going into her senior year. By the time her final year at Valpo came to, she was completing power research with one of her professors. Each opportunity was a chance for Kallie to discover her place in the field — a calling she answered as an electrical engineer for Burns & McDonnell’s networks, integration, and automation (NIA) department. Her job: building communication networks for electric utilities and impacting local providers’ electric grids nationwide.
For students looking for a similar pipeline into electrical engineering, Kallie has some advice. “Something I didn’t really think about when I was a student is all the different skills that go into different areas of engineering, like product development versus consulting. In my position, I’m constantly answering emails, in meetings, talking to people, and getting that face-to-face interaction,” Kallie explains. It’s just another way that Valpo encouraged her to explore. “That’s where I feel like Valpo, being a liberal arts school, gives students way more opportunities to hone those skills. Take writing courses. Know how to write a professional email. It’s super important that you know how to talk to people, and Valpo really prepared me in that way, and more, for my current job.”
To follow in Kallie’s footsteps, learn about Valpo’s exploratory programs and discover your future in engineering today!