B.S., 2007
Piping engineer, BE&K
“I knew I wanted to go into engineering when I was in high school, since I had always enjoyed taking stuff apart and trying to figure out how to fix it, how to make it better.”
The Southeast is blessed with numerous high-quality, competitive engineering schools, but David Scott, a Birmingham native who graduated from Oak Mountain High School, says he was fortunate to find one of the best right in his backyard: the School of Engineering at UAB. Scott earned a degree in mechanical engineering and found a job at BE&K right after graduating.
On entering the job market right out of college:
“Finding a job wasn’t a major concern of mine, because I knew if I couldn’t find something locally there’d be plenty of opportunities in the Southeast and across the nation. But I was happy to find something close to home with a company I had heard good things about.
“I’m a piping engineer, and BE&K does a lot of industrial design, so I do pipe routing, pipe stresses, pump calculations, and things like that; I am presently doing a lot of work at several International Paper mills in Alabama. The department I am in mainly does modifications to existing systems, which requires me to travel out into the field on a regular basis to gather the information I need to get the job done.”
Scott praises the education he got at the School of Engineering for properly preparing him for life in a real-world engineering career. He recalls working on a number of projects at the SOE, one of which stands out in his mind as being a particularly valuable experience.
On his senior project in engineering school:
“The biggest thing, I think, that prepared me for the real world was my senior design project, where we had to build an off-road vehicle for a competition. That took me and four other people a good part of a year to do—we built the car from scratch and entered it into the contest. The logistics of that project—working on the team, fabricating the pieces, and manufacturing parts—gave me a heads-up on what a real project out in the working world was like. It took a lot of teamwork, and that’s definitely something you’re involved in when you’re in a real-world environment.”
Scott’s positive experience at UAB made an impression on at least one other person—his younger brother, Michael, who just graduated with a degree in computer science; they currently share an apartment in the Southside area of Birmingham. Michael was sold on UAB partly because of the positive relationships he saw his brother develop with both students and faculty.
On one of his favorite mentors in engineering school:
“Tina Oliver [an instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering] was our advisor for the vehicle project, and all of the team members from that project are still really good friends with her; in fact, when she got her Ph.D. a couple of weeks ago, we all went to her graduation. We all developed great relationships during our senior project, and those relationships have continued to this day.”