Recruiting is kicking up at DMC! This year, we are proud to be sponsoring engineering clubs at the alma maters of many of our employees. What’s really exciting is that these clubs were home to many of our engineers – and, even after graduation, our team is still passionate about their mission and their success.
Rose-Hulman
Welcome Back Wednesday
DMC is a Gold Sponsor for Rose-Hulman’s Welcome Back Wednesday, an event to kick off the school year when all students come back to campus. This year, we brought DrinkBot and handed out flavored sodas.
DMC was proud to be one of the primary sponsors for the event as we have many Rose-Hulman alumni – Ben Griffith, Bryce Pruemer, Caleb Stoll, Carolyn Corcoran, Christian Owen, Dan Freve, Glen Janson, Jason Ims, John Sullivan, Jon Carson, Keith Janson, Leigh Matthews, Ryan Landwehr, Sam Alvares, and Shay Merley.
While on campus, Shay discovered that his and Bryce’s picture is now plastered on the side of a new building.
Dr. Ryder Winck’s Industrial Controls Class
DMC will continue to partner with Dr. Ryder Winck’s industrial controls class on campus this academic year.
DMC first partnered with Dr. Winck in 2019 to create the class. We helped to come up with a lot of the course content, refine the curriculum, create homework assignments and lab work, and give our insights for what working in industry looks like.
“It’s definitely a first of its kind class for Rose-Hulman in terms of collaborating with a company to be able to teach. I think this is super interesting. Not a lot of schools have any sort of industrial controls classwork,” Carolyn Corcoran, a Senior Project Engineer at DMC and Rose-Hulman alumni who helped create the class, said. “Dr. Winck is hoping to spread these to other schools and teach other professors how to teach these kinds of concepts. Rose-Hulman puts a lot of pride in getting students ready for industry jobs, and I think this is a huge missing piece in some of the course curriculum that students don’t exposure to how industrial manufacturing works – and that’s such a huge part of what you might be doing as a mechanical engineer.”
During the class, Carolyn and alumni John Sullivan, Senior Director, West Region at DMC, do weekly check-ins, call in to do code reviews in front of class and give feedback, and answer any questions students ask in a shared Slack workspace.
Carolyn went to campus in fall semester of 2022 and gave a demonstration of the Winding Demo – a motion demo Rose-Hulman students designed and DMC then built as a FedEx Day project that can display speed or tension control.
Winding Demo
“That level of corporate involvement in class and being able to emphasize that what you’re learning in this class is something that is useful in the world outside of Rose Hulman [is so important],” Carolyn said. “So much of what you do in college is all theoretical and you’re making all sorts of crazy assumptions, and it’s cool to see how controls concepts actually get applied in industry.”
The class will be running again this school year in the Spring, according to Carolyn, and DMC is bringing in more Rose-Hulman alumni to network, interface with students, share some of our Core Values, and teach more about what it is that we do and why DMC is an awesome company to work with.
Rice University
Rice Eclipse
DMC is an Interplanetary Sponsor for Eclipse, Rice University’s rocketry team.
Within the club there are three main divisions: Aerodynamics, Propulsion, and Avionics. Then there are 20 sub teams divided amongst the divisions with some adjacent sub teams like the certificates program, and an officer board which oversees club operations.
The club has two main focuses: to build a hybrid rocket engine, and to build a custom carbon fiber rocket airframe that can fly with it. The Aerodynamics team designs and builds the team's rocket airframes, while the Propulsion team’s goal is to build a hybrid rocket engine that has enough thrust to fly. This has been the club's mission since its inception and after many rockets and engine design iterations, the club is closer than ever to accomplishing their goal.
Last year, Eclipse alumni from DMC attended and brought pizza to one of the Eclipse meetings on campus. They gave an About DMC presentation and had the opportunity to walk around the club space, see what they had been working on, and network with those current students. DMC will be attending an Eclipse meeting again this year on October 23 at 5pm.
“DMC’s involvement exposes the students to our industry, and, because Rice is a more academic research focused institution rather than an industry institution, one of the big drawbacks of Rice is that there isn’t as much industry exposure,” Luke Howe-Kerr, a Systems Engineer at DMC and Rice Eclipse alumni, said. “Being able to go to these meetings and showcase what we do as a company is really valuable because a lot of people do not even realize that companies like us exist. Also, the fact that we have a really strong history of hiring Rice people is a testament to the company culture rather than just being random faces at a career fair. It’s just that little bit of a personal connection [that] really helps with vouching for the company culture, which is important to a lot of people.”
Luke Howe-Kerr, Teddy Hoisington, and Natalie Pippolo, former Rice Eclipse members and now DMC engineers, holding the rockets they built to earn their L1 and L2 Rocketry Certifications.
Good culture is what keeps a lot of people around Eclipse as well, according to Luke, and he is happy to help as a Rice Eclipse alumnus.
DMCers Natalie Pippolo and Teddy Hoisington hanging out at the test site while members of Eclipse.
Another Rice Eclipse alumni, Teddy Hoisington, a Systems Engineer at DMC, adds that our contribution strengthens the Rice alumni network.
“Rice Eclipse is one of the largest engineering clubs on campus at Rice, and the scope of work they are doing costs a decent amount of money,” Teddy said. “It does mean a lot that their Eclipse alums are able to get their employers to help sponsor the club activities and keep this network of alums still involved. Our donation helps them accomplish their goals and strengthens our alumni network with them.”
The money DMC donates goes directly towards buying materials and allows the club to continue working towards their goals, according to Teddy, while learning data acquisition and testing as well as other applicable skills that can be transferred when working in industry.
The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at RICE
DMC has hired many alumni from Rice – specifically, many women – and we are proud to be a Gold Alliance Partner with the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Rice.
“SWE is an organization that focuses on building community and promoting the advancement of women in STEM,” Elizabeth Goodnight, a Project Engineer at DMC and Rice alumni, said. “In your career, it also provides a lot of different opportunities for training, advancement, and networking to provide a support system – especially for those of us who might continue to work in a male-dominated field, industry, or work environment.”
The organization focuses on diversity and inclusion and is also open to gender minorities as a whole.
“Anybody who identifies as a woman or any gender minority who is in engineering can be a part of it,” Natalie Pippolo, a Systems Engineer at DMC and Rice almumni, said. “Most universities have chapters where people who are studying engineering can get scholarships from SWE, or SWE will help you find internships, help you out with job search, and just be a community and host events for women in engineering.”
Last year and again this year DMC will host an event with the club where our Rice alumni will give a presentation regarding professional development or engineering awareness. In the past, these have included resume reviews and presentations on What is Technical Consulting? Or What to Expect in a Technical Interview.
Our Rice alumni include – Andreas Piaggio, Andy Corbato, Caroline Courbois, Casimir Smith, Cecilia Tetlow, Elizabeth Goodnight, Eric Voigt, Fadil Eledath, Gabby Martinez, Jacob Rupp, John Michael Frullo, John Williams, Luke Howe-Kerr, Natalie Pippolo, Nick Leisle, Odnan Galvan, Perry Lin, Teddy Hoisington, and Vedant Patwari.
Notre Dame
The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at Notre Dame
DMC will also be partnering with Notre Dame SWE as well this year.
SWE at Notre Dame had a large impact on alumni Mia Gorman as she found out about DMC through a SWE email.
“Company sponsorships of SWE had a large impact on where I applied because of name recognition and getting to network with people at presentations about the companies,” Mia said. “In-person presentations specifically gave SWE members an opportunity to get a great feel for the people who work at these companies and see women in their field talk about their successes at the company, which was huge for me when applying.”
Our Notre Dame alumni include – Aaron Dorrance, Abby Greentree, Adam Wojcik, David Berno, Eddie Hunckler, Jason Mayes, Jason Wassel, Jeff McCormick, Jesse Batsche, John Dusing, Kyle Grebb, Steven Dusing, Max Domenech, Paul Mangels, Rose Appel, and Tim Hosty.
Robot Football Club
DMC will be sponsoring the Notre Dame Robot Football Club again this year. The club builds robots to compete in football matches played on basketball courts against other universities.
Our contribution directly impacts the club and allows the club to buy new parts and build new robots or repair those that are broken, according to Aaron Dorrance, a Systems Engineer at DMC and Notre Dame Robot Football Club alumni.
As alumni of the club, Aaron and Eddie Hunkler leverage their embedded systems engineering skills from DMC and volunteer their time to the College Robot Football Conference, a conference to organize all robot football teams and expand the sport, to create more reliable, new tackle sensors for all the robots.
Like last year, we will be sponsoring the Combine event hosted at Notre Dame on November 11, 2023, along with a networking event where students can chat with Aaron and Eddie about DMC.
“Robot football is a great activity that really builds good fundamental and practical engineering skills – especially relevant for DMC because [members] are building robots,” Aaron said. “They’re learning how electrical communications work between different parts of robots, learning how to do motor control, learning how to build robust machines because these robots really take a beating, learning how to build the best way to interact with these robots through controllers or whatever interface they want to use. In that sense, it’s really good practical engineering.”
Fixing robots on the fly is also really good under pressure engineering, according to Aaron.
“For DMC, this is exactly the type of engineering event that we want to support. These are the types of engineers that we want to hire.”
Northwestern
The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at Northwestern
For the first time, DMC will be sponsoring SWE at Northwestern.
"Northwestern SWE was an important source of support both socially and professionally," Emily Blackman, a Systems Engineer at DMC and Northwestern alumni, said. "I hope DMC's sponsorship will enable Northwestern SWE to continue giving women the support to not only continue in STEM, but to thrive in it."
Later this year we will be joining for a member meeting with alumni for a professional development workshop.
Northwestern University Robotics Club (NURC)
DMC will also be a Silver Partner for NURC for the first time this year. Our contribution will help fund their projects for the year.
Northwestern alumni Stephen Shull, a Systems Engineer at DMC, and Brandon Tanner, a Project Engineer at DMC, also recently went back to campus and hosted an informational session about DMC with the club as well.
"We talked about what DMC does and how the work that they do with their robotics club relates to work that we do in industry," Brandon said. "It was also an opportunity for student to ask questions about life after college and things to expect when entering the workforce."
Our Northwestern alumni include – Aaron Shoemaker, Alex Sabala, Blake Strebel, Brandon Tanner, Brent Hoerman, Bridget Miles, Emily Blackman, Jacob Bruce, Kevin Service, Mark Locascio, Nikhil Holay, Rachel Hughes, Stephen Shull, Tim Herrmann, TJ Dohm, and Zen Iwankiw.
Advisory Board Involvement
Some of our alumni are especially passionate about improving the next generations of engineers and sit on the industry advisory boards for their alma maters.
John Sullivan, Senior Director of DMC’s West Region and Rose-Hulman alumni, sits on the Industry Advisory Board at Rose-Hulman.
Jason Mayes, Senior Director of DMC’s South Region and Notre Dame alumni, sits on the Industry Advisory Board at Notre Dame.
Ray King, a Senior Project Engineer in our Houston, Texas office and Texas A&M alumni, sits on the Industry Advisory Board for the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology program at Texas A&M.
The three return to campus for annual meetings, consult with the faculty in the department for course direction and curriculum, and network and advise students interested in careers in industrial controls.
DMC is happy to engage with academia and contribute to these programs to support current DMC employees who are passionate about their universities’ programs as well as the future generation of engineers.
Learn more about DMC’s company culture and check out our open positions!