Alum of the Month January 2007

Michelle MacFarland '03

Michelle is a senior at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY earning her aerospace engineering degree.

What academic and extracurricular activities were you interested in while at Erskine?
My main activities were Student Council and varsity swim team, though I also participated in Destination Imagination, Speech Team, varsity Math Team, and Yearbook. While on Student Council, I served as President my senior year, regional President for two years, and held a state office for three years. I was a member of the Waterville YMCA Dolphin swim team for my junior and senior years and a lifelong Girl Scout outside of school. I took mostly math and science classes including five years of math and four years of science, as well as shop, home ec, and the required English and history.

Do you have any special Erskine memories?
Erskine is a place where great memories are born. I remember things such as Mr. Ridgeway singing and playing his guitar to us before every AP Physics exam in order to get us relaxed. I remember Student Council outings to state and national conferences. Traveling with friends and Mac are memories I will always have. I remember sitting on buses for hours with frozen hair and shivering to death on the swim team bus to Waterville every night. I remember Project Grad and the memories I made with friends, some of whom I never saw again. The memories I look back on may not necessarily be academic but are definitely the memories that shaped who I am today. They gave me the personality and confidence to do the things I do today.

When did you decide on an engineering career and why did you choose Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)?
I decided in eighth grade at the national Student Council conference in Kansas. I was always fascinated with space and contemplated a career as an astronaut. At the national conference, an active astronaut spoke to a large group of us. Afterwards, I tracked him down and asked him what would be a good track into the space program. He suggested engineering, though he actually recommended against aeronautical engineering instead stating that a basic science and engineering background would be sufficient. I chose RPI for many reasons, the first being money and proximity to home as well as it being one of the closest schools to Maine with a respectable aerospace engineering program. At Erskine, I received the RPI Medal, given out to an Erskine Academy junior every year, and the award gave me the chance and incentive to look at the school. When I visited RPI, I liked what I saw, the campus, extracurricular activities, emphasis on Greek life, and academics. Although the town of Troy in general is not a place that anyone in their right mind would want to move to, the campus features outweigh the negatives of the town.

Did a particular class or teacher at Erskine influence your choice of study?
Mr. Ridgeway taught me that I can do whatever I choose to do. During my senior year, he talked to me every day in class about RPI and school. He helped me through AP Physics by believing in me and telling me that being a girl didn't matter. I could do just as much in the world of science and math as any guy out there. Mac [Mrs. MacFarland] taught me to never give up when stressed or overwhelmed. She was there with a chocolate chip cookie, hug, or smile to make things okay. She always told me that everything would work out in the end. She had all the faith in the world in me when I didn' thave faith in myself. I am lucky to experience herStudent Council kids.Comment on your experience at RPI and what you've enjoyed (or not) in your years there. RPI has been a very interesting place for me both positively and negatively. After the loss of a good high school friend before freshmen year, I questioned if being seven hours away from home was actually a good thing for me. After beginning college, I found my niche in Greek life. I was at first a "house girl" with several fraternities before pledging and joining Alpha Omega Epsilon, where I am now a sorority sister. I swam on the varsity swim team my freshmen year and cheered for football and competition seasons for the next two years. I am a member of SWE, the Society of Women Engineers. After my junior year of college, I moved off campus into an apartment, and this experience can change one's perception of college. I have more freedom and opportunity for greater responsibility and growth. My major has been a great learning experience and given me the chance to consider if it is really what I want to do with the rest of my life (as every college student does at one point or another). The aerospace engineering program offers some wonderful classes as well as some drudge classes. This past semester one of my most interesting and fun classes was in the wind tunnel, where we were able to view how air allows a plane to fly or crash. I had a particularly memorable class on electricity where we built circuits to create different chips. One lab group's circuit exploded, causing a horrible smell and tripping the fire alarm. Overall, my experience has been positive with a few bumps in the road, but I have enjoyed what I've done.

Has being a female in a predominantly male field impacted you at all in today's world?
As we would all hope, the fact that I am a female in a male-dominated field should not matter in 2007, but it still does. Working with an all-male lab group can be interesting because some guys still have the feeling that a woman's work is not "good enough" for them. When I worked in such a lab group that had group-graded lab reports, there were numerous times when my section of the lab report was ripped up by certain group members simply because it was written by a woman. However, if I did the work and allowed a male group member to hand it in it was fine. There are professors who make you prove yourself at the beginning of the semester before they will pay attention to you, and my advisor made me prove myself as an underclassman before he would really help me out. Last summer, I had a full-time job at an engineering firm and was promoted to team leader managing several men older then me who had their degrees. At first this was a big bone of contention, not because they didn't like me, we all got along, but simply because they didn't feel I deserved the position as a younger female. I have had my resume handed back to me at job fairs by large companies because I was a cheerleader and that "isn't the type of person they were looking for." I've served as an ambassador for other large companies because they felt that girls represent their company well and they were trying to better diversify the company by hiring more females. It's as if certain people aren't going to waste their time on you unless you can prove that you belong there working alongside the guys.

What are your future plans and dreams?
At this point I'm not really sure. I want to find a job within my major. I interviewed for a position with Northrop Grumman last year in California, and that was very interesting. Another thought is to work at a space camp or Challenger Learning Center because I am also earning a sociology minor. But I am not ruling out anything and keeping my options open. I will begin to job hunt in October. In the end, I just want to find a job that makes me happy, live in a location that my boyfriend and I both enjoy, and grow old happily with a family.