Alumni

Patently Prolific by Marcia Goodrich Two thousand years before the Industrial Revolution, the Greek mathematician Hero came up with the idea for the steam turbine. English engineer Sir Charles Parsons built the first one in 1884, to generate electricity. And for the last twenty years, Steven Burdgick has fiddled, tweaked, and tinkered with steam turbines and their close cousins, gas turbines, ultimately revolutionizing . . .

Kristin Kolodge (Schwalbach) graduated from Michigan Tech in 1995 with her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. After attending Women in Engineering during Summer Youth Programs, she was hooked. Michigan Tech was the only school she applied to. Kolodge’s career started as a contract employee for Chrysler and was hired on directly several months later. She spent 19 years at Chrysler, working to create . . .

Colleen L. Jones-Cervantes earned her BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 1983. After graduation Colleen started working at Chevron and has spent her career there in positions of increasing responsibility. She was often the only woman in these positions. Her first position with Chevron was in San Francisco, California as a project engineer in their retail marketing department. . . .

Donald G. Wheatley went to work for General Motors in 1963. He worked on the guidance systems doing vibration and fatigue analysis for the Apollo project. Out of the sixty new hires on the project, he was the only one remaining at the end. He also did some work on the main battle tank. Don then accepted an offer from Ford, where he worked on a small team to define the new Ford Maverick. He later led the team that designed . . .