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Beavers Endowed Chair Delivers Talk on Heavy Civil Construction Industry

William Wolfe

Beavers Endowed Chair in Heavy Civil Construction William Wolfe on Monday extolled the advantages of a career in heavy civil to a class of civil engineering and construction management students.

”Heavy civil is the infrastructure part. You’re got vertical and you’ve got horizontal. We’re talking about the horizontal,” he explained.

Heavy civil projects include bridges, dams, roads, tunnels and transportation and water systems. One advantage of that career path, he said, is that the projects are tangible and easy to explain. “When you talk about these big projects, you don’t need to explain yourself,” he said. Continue reading “Beavers Endowed Chair Delivers Talk on Heavy Civil Construction Industry”

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Griffith Co. Offers Opportunities for Civil Engineering and Construction Grads

griffith employeesBuilding a good reputation is important, says Griffith Co. Chairman and CEO Tom Foss. And Foss should know. He started at Griffith as a laborer four decades ago, and rose through the ranks, transitioning to foreman, estimator, chief coordinator, then Orange County vice president and district manager.

Established in 1902, Griffith is a midsized heavy civil construction company that employs about 1,000. “We try to do things that give us a family feel,” said Foss, a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and a fundraiser for the Beaver’s Endowed Chair in Heavy Civil Engineering. “We want to make employees feel like part of the team.” Continue reading “Griffith Co. Offers Opportunities for Civil Engineering and Construction Grads”

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Career Development Center Offers Last-minute Prep for Fall Engineering Job Fair

Attending a job fair requires strategy and preparation. That’s why Jina Flores was on hand Tuesday to help steer engineering students through the process one day ahead of the Fall Engineering & Technology Career Fair in the University Student Union.

“There are huge crowds and lots of employers,” said Flores, lead career counselor at the CSULB Career Development Center. “Practice your pitch. There’s only a very small percentage of students who can wing it.” Continue reading “Career Development Center Offers Last-minute Prep for Fall Engineering Job Fair”

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Northrop Grumman Holds Resume Workshop for Post-Military Students

Five veterans attend a resume workshopIf you’ve served in the military, you probably have a long list of accomplishments to include on your resume. But those acronym-rich descriptions can require some translating to make sense to civilian hiring managers.

On Monday, recruiters from Northrop-Grumman were at the CSULB College of Engineering to help veterans present their military experience in a way that  stands out for hiring managers going through stacks of resumes.

“The resume workshop for veterans offered tips on how to translate a military background to a civilian-friendly resume,” said Eddie Jimenez, a Northrop Grumman university relations specialist. “The idea is to help them create better resumes.” Continue reading “Northrop Grumman Holds Resume Workshop for Post-Military Students”

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CECS’s Alvaro Monge Completes Google Faculty in Residence Summer Program

Graduating computer science students are all too familiar with the technical interview, where they’re asked to solve a problem on a whiteboard to demonstrate why they might be a useful addition to the team. However, that approach is in sharp contrast to the usual college lectures, where students sit quietly as professors click through their slide decks.

That will now change—at least in some of Professor Alvaro Monge’s computer science classes—thanks to his newfound experience with project-based learning.

Monge was one of 21 faculty from 20 U.S. institutions serving underrepresented students who participated in Google’s Faculty in Residence program this summer. The four-week program in Mountain View, Calif., offered an immersive learning experience to explore hands-on, project-based learning workshops. Continue reading “CECS’s Alvaro Monge Completes Google Faculty in Residence Summer Program”

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Creativity and Innovation on Display with MAE Senior Design Projects

Ever wish your skateboard had brakes or your bike could charge your phone? Several CSULB engineering students had those wishes too. But instead of just wishing, they turned those ideas into a reality.

On Monday, 22 groups of mechanical engineering students demonstrated their Senior Design Projects at the Engineering Innovation Expo in the University Student Union. Heavy on green and renewable energy, the projects were the results of two semesters of work—including plenty of late nights and weekends. Continue reading “Creativity and Innovation on Display with MAE Senior Design Projects”

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Multi-disciplinary SoCalGas Teams Conduct Real-world Research

Southern California Gas Co. teams

Some engineers work for years before one of their designs makes it out into the world. But thanks to a collaborative program between the CSULB College of Engineering and Southern California Gas Co., some students have that opportunity as an undergraduate.

Each year, SoCalGas assigns technical problems to teams of mechanical engineering and chemical engineering students who work to resolve them as part of their Senior Design Projects. The problems are challenging and thought-provoking. Rather than draw on results from other researchers, the students must come up with solutions of their own. Continue reading “Multi-disciplinary SoCalGas Teams Conduct Real-world Research”

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G2 Software Systems Interviews for Open Computer Science Positions

San Diego-based G2 Software Systems is often enlisted to fix broken systems or refresh ones that are out of date. The company’s sweet spot is with the defense industry’s large, complex, and sometimes antiquated, systems. G2 was hired to create software that sends alerts throughout all branches of the military, notifies the continent’s defense and aviation organizations to suspicious aircraft, and lets military personnel be trained simultaneously around the globe.

On Wednesday, a group from G2 visited the CSULB College of Engineering to interview graduating computer science seniors for possible jobs or internships. G2’s founder, Georgia Griffiths, is a CSULB alumni and member of the Dean’s Advisory Council.

G2 General Manager Pete Keyes. COE Development Director Nicole Forrest-Boggs, and mathematician Christopher Priebe.
G2 General Manager Pete Keyes. COE Development Director Nicole Forrest-Boggs, and mathematician Christopher Priebe.

“She’s a great supporter of scholarships for the College of Engineering,” said COE Development Director Nicole Forrest-Boggs, whose office organized the event. “We’re very happy to have them here.”

The G2 contingent included general manager Pete Keyes, mathematician Christopher Priebe, and office manager Jessica Rose, a CUSLB alumni.

Priebe, who manages a technology team at G2, said job prospects are bright for computer science majors. “This is a booming industry. It’s a seller’s market. There’s a lot of competition for engineers,” he said. Continue reading “G2 Software Systems Interviews for Open Computer Science Positions”

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Professional Development Speaker Series: Working as a Google Engineer

If you want to know the questions that Google interviewers ask, don’t believe the dozens of books and blog posts written on the subject. Because the minute an interview question is found to be published, it’s added to the list of banned questions, says Google software engineer Chris Clark, who was at CSULB Tuesday to talk about what it’s like to be an engineer at Google.

Clark was the top computer science student in his class at UCLA, where he double majored in applied mathematics. He won a Hewlett-Packard scholarship that guaranteed him three internships at the company.

But after completing his first summer internship there, he declined a second one in favor of internships at Xerox and then Microsoft. After his 2008 graduation, Microsoft hired him full-time. Seven years ago, he was recruited by Google.

The search engine giant, said Clark, “is very good at empowering every engineer.” The company’s open environment and support of its employees is legendary, as are its kitchens.

Clark said the micro-kitchens serve a purpose in addition to keeping employees in snacks, refreshments, and meals. “They foster communication with other people. You might go to pick up a water and overhear someone trying to solve a technical problem and end up in a conversation,” he said. Continue reading “Professional Development Speaker Series: Working as a Google Engineer”

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Technical Seminar: Understanding the Flight of the Boomerang

Associate Dean of Research & Graduate Programs Hamid Rahai left, welcomes John Vassberg to CSULB.

Have you ever wondered how boomerangs fly? John Vassberg has. One of Boeing’s top aerodynamicists, Vassberg was at CSULB Friday to deliver one his most popular lectures—one that delves into the aerodynamic capabilities of a hunting tool developed by Aboriginal Australians thousands of years ago.

“It’s turned out to be a cult classic,” said Vassberg, who has given the talk in Paris and Brussels and at Caltech and University of Southern California. “Maybe I’ll teach you something so you’ll have something to do over the weekend,” he told faculty and students at the Spring Technical Seminar.

Now Technical Lead and Chief Aerodynamicist of Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ Advanced Concepts Design Center in Southern California, Vassberg did the research back in 2012 when he was asked to present at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) conference. Continue reading “Technical Seminar: Understanding the Flight of the Boomerang”