Rowan & Roots

What inspired you to pursue engineering, and why Rowan?

Growing up, I was constantly taking things apart and putting them together.  I was fascinated by my grandfather’s model trains and tried helping my father with crafting projects probably younger than I should have.

I was exposed to a wide array of activities, so it wasn’t just me playing mad scientist with Lego sets.  Wood shop?  Middle and high school.  Metal shop?  High school, learned to trim and fold sheet metal, some soldering, and spot welding.  Shockingly, only girl in the class.  Technical theater work?  Started in high school, continuing through some of college at the local community college.  I actually considered technical theater seriously as a major and was accepted to a school in that major.

I grew up thinking I would be attending Georgian Court University, back when it was still a college, as my mother had graduated from there and my grandfather had been a landscaper on campus so I had spent a lot of time there.  Unfortunately, they didn’t offer an engineering degree.  I was accepted as a math major, which would have allowed me to take advantage of a partnership with George Washington University and would have involved some extra time in school.

My father graduated from NJIT back in its NCE days as a civil engineer.  I did visit the campus but I could not see myself attending school in an urban area.

I was accepted to Rutgers as an undeclared but I didn’t think a giant university would be a good fit for me either.

Rowan College came onto my radar pretty early.  My mother was a high school biology and chemistry teacher and was kept pretty up to date in what schools were offering.  When the school announced a new engineering program, she pretty much told me that’s where I would end up!  I don’t mean to sound like I was shoved at Rowan: I had plenty of time and opportunity to make other decisions.  The more I heard about Rowan, the better it got: University status, small classes, and lots of scholarships.

From pure dollars, Georgian Court offered me the most.  However, between Rowan’s tuition cost and scholarship, it definitely won out.

The final push was engineering’s versatility.  Who designs the super complex theater mechanics?  Engineers!

Rowan Engineering offered a more rural environment, small class size, and a state-of-the-art facility.  It was a risk, sure, but one I was comfortable making.

Do you have a favorite memory from your time at Rowan Engineering?

When I realized I understood vibrations.  We were part way through Introduction to Acoustics so it was a bit late to notice but I was watching one classmate explain something to another and I realized “oh, I totally get it!”  Just in time, too: our first midterm was that afternoon!

Runner up would probably be trash talking Dr. Chen about our Fluid Mechanics 2 final: he had been away the last few weeks of the semester and we had another professor substituting so the final was kind of a softball from him.  I gave him enough of a hard time that he snapped back “That’s it, Lapinski: I’m grading yours first!”

Was there a professor or class that shaped your path?

Probably Dr. John Chen: he was the faculty advisory for two of my Junior/Senior clinic projects, which were both sponsored by the Navy.  Considering I ended up working for them, clinic probably helped there! 

What’s the most valuable skill you learned at Rowan that you still use today?

Persistence.  We got so many problems and projects that really pushed the limits of what we had been taught in class.  So many hours were spent trying to really establish the bounds of what was expected and even more in figuring it out.  I wanted to be successful and that meant putting in that time and not just walking away. 

What engineering problem or project have you worked on that you’re most proud of?

Probably the acoustics problem where we were determining the properties of a disk with nothing anchoring it.  It’s certainly the problem I remember the most!

How has your career evolved since graduating? Any surprising twists?

I did not expect going in that I would be working for the Navy, much less for my whole career!

Quick Hits

NAVSEA Philly

Snapple Raspberry Iced Tea

AutoCAD

Olive Garden

Confirmation

“I became an engineer because…”

I wanted to be successful.