Faculty Contact Has Career Benefits
Over the years, I have made it a top priority to stay engaged with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Illinois. Among other things, I’ve made extra special effort to stay connected to my former professors. Even when I was a student, I never hesitated to take full advantage of their office hours. I always figured that they were required to be there, so I might as well help to make their time in their office worthwhile. The availability of professors and their dedication to the students made a lasting impression.
Not long after I graduated, I came to a realization about my professors – they are people just like you and me, and being a professor is just one facet of their lives. While it is often difficult for students, and even many graduates, to accept this fact, it is what has fostered my continued relationships with my professors, even more than 15 years after leaving the University of Illinois.
I was lucky to have wonderful professors to serve as mentors and role models throughout the years, and now I am lucky to be able to call several of my former professors colleagues. My former professors have facilitated every facet of my career to date. They recommended companies to which I should apply and provided me with references when those companies inquired as to my abilities and character. They also provided me with ongoing career guidance, even going so far as to guide my transition from engineering into the legal profession.
I was able to follow in the footsteps of one professor, who took a sabbatical as I was graduating with my master’s degree in order to attend law school. When I decided that law school was my next step, one of the first calls I made was to this professor who provided me with the guidance and support I needed to properly evaluate my decision to take the next step. Not only were my former professors available to give me career guidance, but even though it had been almost 10 years since I left Champaign, I still had the connections to my professors that I needed to obtain the requisite law school recommendations. Throughout law school I stayed in touch with several professors from Illinois, and upon graduation, I once again found that they were more than willing to provide me with references and opportunities for networking, once I had reestablished myself in the Chicago area.
Now that I have made the successful transition to the practice of law, I see my former professors in a whole new light. While my career field has changed, my practice revolves around environmental rules, regulations and policy as well as environmental remediation and engineered structures. As such, I have been able to call upon my former professors to provide me with recommendations for consultants and experts, and my former professors have called upon me with similar requests. While not all of my former professors are still in Champaign, they all still have a connection to Champaign which continues to foster our relationships.
When I have the opportunity to return to campus one of my favorite activities is to wander the halls of Newmark to see if any of my former professors are in their offices. Although I have been gone less than 20 years, one thing that has struck me is the new faces throughout the department. Although I may not have been a student of any of the newer professors, I believe that I can still have a relationship with them, due to my connections to the department. I have looked up and connected with many of the newer professors on social media platforms such as LinkedIn to learn more about their research areas and to try to facilitate new professional connections. Many of the professors are looking to engage with practicing engineers, in order to study real-world situations, or to engage their students outside of the laboratory.
Each and every alumnus of the department has the potential to assist in this manner. Professors, new and experienced, are looking to enhance their experiences at the University of Illinois. I am fortunate that I have been able to benefit both from my own reaching out to professors, and from their reaching out to me. It is through these relationships that I have been able to remain connected to the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of Illinois, and through this connection I have been able to prolong and enhance both my educational experience and my professional career.
Dana Mehlman during her time as a CEE student on the Concrete Canoe team