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Securing the job

Engineering student obtains position at Edwards Air Force Base

By California State University, Bakersfield

April 28^th, 2020

As exciting as graduating from college can be, mixed in with the sense of pride and accomplishment is often a looming question: What’s next?

While most new graduates will take a beat to decide their next step, California State University, Bakersfield electrical engineering student Grace Roman already has a job lined up before she has even completed her final classes. Come summer, she will be working at Edwards Air Force Base as an Electronics Engineer in the Instrumentation Operations department.

“I’m very thankful,” Roman, 27, said of the job. “I feel honored and humbled at the same time.”

Finishing school is a feat all on its own, but Roman has also accomplished that while raising two daughters, a 9-year-old and an 8-month-old. The full-time student also works in the Fab Lab, which has been an integral part in her success at CSUB and beyond.

“At the Fab Lab, we have a technical environment,” Roman said. “It was the exact same thing at Edwards. Touring Edwards (and) what I do here, it is all rapid prototyping, so I felt comfortable when I was interviewing.”

Passion for engineering

Roman’s passion for engineering started when she was a student at Taft College and continued when she transferred to CSUB’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering. It was a philosophy professor, Dr. John Eigenauer at Taft College who encouraged Roman to find something she loved and pursue it wholeheartedly.

“When I told him that my interest was science and math, he didn’t laugh at me, he didn’t think I was incapable of it,” Roman said. “I was home, researching all these majors. I came across engineering, and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is describing me as a person. This is who I am,’ because there is a creative factor, there are mathematics and problem solving.”

Starting at CSUB in the spring of 2018, Roman enrolled in her first set of upper division engineering courses.

“That semester, everything just flourished,” she said. “That was a start.”

The first in her family to go to college, Roman had to figure out academic life on her own. She quickly discovered the key to thriving was to not be afraid to ask for help.

“I haven’t been afraid to ask how I should go about things or get advice,” she said. “Any advice I do get, I listen and I take it. I think that is why I have been able to navigate through it.”

Strong connections

In addition to support from her family and fiancé, Roman has also built strong connections on campus. Balancing school, work, and two daughters has not been easy, but the support she has found at CSUB has contributed to her success.

“It is not easy by any means but it is attainable, and I also have a really good team here, with my classmates,” she said. “It is definitely a teamwork environment in the engineering program at CSUB.”

One of her teammates both in the engineering program and at the Fab Lab is senior Alfredo Arevalo. He has also accepted a job at Edwards Air Force Base, in the same position as Roman. When his own interview there went well, he was asked if he knew anyone else who might be a good fit for a second open position. He recommended Roman apply.

Arevalo agreed that working at the Fab Lab has given him essential experience that will help when he’s on the job at Edwards. He said since both use the same kind of machines for fabrication, his time at the Fab Lab has already prepared him for about half of what he will do at the new job.

“The other 50% is what I learned in class, which I’m going to have to apply to make the instruments,” Arevalo, 27, said. “It’s a perfect balance.”

Both Roman and Arevalo will work on designing and building the instruments that are in Edwards’ aircrafts. They will join Alejandro Ramirez, a fellow CSUB graduate who initially asked Andrea Medina, director of grants and outreach for the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering, if she knew any students who would be a good fit for the job.

"I was contacted by a CSUB alum currently working at Edwards Air Force base, who incidentally was one of the students who set up the Fab Lab when it first opened,” Medina said. “I was thrilled to hear that both Alfredo and Grace were made offers at Edwards. It feels like a complete circle."

Graduating during a pandemic

Before she graduates, Roman has one more challenge to overcome: her final semester’s classes moving online due to public health concerns around the coronavirus. Though the first week learning from home was overwhelming, she said, she and her family eventually settled into a routine that would allow her to spend her days focusing on schoolwork while her daughters are at their grandmother’s house doing their own schooling, and her evenings enjoying family time at home.

“It took some time to develop a good system at home,” she said, “but once we got it going, it worked out for all of us.”

Roman’s schoolwork isn’t the only part of her life that has changed: she and the other Fab Lab interns are working from home, creating STEM activity videos for kids to stay busy at home.

This might not be the way that Roman imagined her senior year, but she’s still feeling good about her education.

“I am not disappointed in the way things worked out,” she said. “In fact, I learned how quickly I was able to adapt to the situation. I was so focused on staying on top of my classes and finishing strong, that I had no room to complain but to figure it out.”

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Footnotes

Story by Kelly Ardis, communications specialist for the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering; Photos by Juan Rodriguez, media production specialist

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FootNotes

Story by Kelly Ardis, communications specialist for the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering; Photos by Juan Rodriguez, media production specialist

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Securing the job

Engineering student obtains position at Edwards Air Force Base

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