Discovering the Power of Engineering, One Jar at a Time

By my senior year in college, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in energy. I was ready to help revolutionize the energy sector and curb climate change. Although I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I was looking at graduation around the corner and I was thinking big.

Getting ready for my final semester designing and building a “capstone” team project, I submitted a dozen energy-related ideas to my professor, and was excited about the opportunity to do a hands-on project in my field of choice. (One example: a special generator to harness clean power from the university fitness center exercise bikes.) Unfortunately for me, my professor rejected my ideas and assigned my team to a project of his own conception: building an automatic jar opener. ?

I was extremely disappointed. I didn’t spend all this time in engineering school to work on something of little consequence, I wanted to make the world a better place. Reluctantly, I met with my new group, divided the tasks, and got to work on customer research. I interviewed potential customers, including an elderly woman who had arthritis and had to wait for her son’s monthly visits to get any new jars or cans opened. As I spoke with more people who struggled with this everyday task, I started to appreciate that just because this problem wasn't a big deal to me, it was a big deal to many others.

After countless hours working with an engineering design software and toiling away in the machine shop trying different approaches, our “Auto-Twist” prototype emerged. Amazingly, it actually worked, and our new machine required very little downward force to open jars of different shapes and sizes. I was filled with pride in our team and excitement to get back to the people I interviewed to let them know about our progress.

I had completely forgotten about clean energy-related ideas that I previously thought would be so much more important than this household product. And in the process, I gained the perspective that every problem poised to improve the quality of someone’s life is a problem worth solving.

This and many other assignments opened my eyes to the vast world of engineering, and I was proud to call myself an engineer when I graduated. Now that I’ve been in this field for almost 20 years, I am even more proud to be part of this service-oriented profession.

Today, our team at SCE, including more than 700 engineers, and engineers around the world, are focused on solving problems that include and go beyond opening a jar. Engineers are not only working to build infrastructure that will be resilient in our changing climate, but also undoing the harm centuries of unregulated production has done to our environment. Engineers are helping keep us housed, safe, healthy, entertained, and so much more. Happy Engineers Week 2022 to my energetic, engineering peers. I wish you all the best and continued determination to solve the world’s problems. I’m sure the solutions are all well in hand.