Basil Dillon-Malone BE MIEEE FSCTE describes how 'during the Covid lockdown a number of the class both in Ireland and the USA held weekly Zoom meetings and one of the topics was that each person gave a description of their life journey since leaving college. We subsequently made this into a book including 30 Life Journeys, posing the question "So you want to be an engineer, why"?'

Students on the front steps. Image courtesy of ucd.ie/merrionstreet – 'The Building of the State: Science & Engineering with Government on Merrion Street'.

Students in Merrion Street at work and at play in the early 1960s. Image courtesy of ucd.ie/merrionstreet – 'The Building of the State: Science & Engineering with Government on Merrion Street'.

If you had a choice to do it all again, would you still become an engineer?

30 Life Journeys is an anthology authored by 30 BE grads of the Class of 1968-plus, from the UCD Merrion Street College of Engineering. 

The storybook collection offers answers to the ‘would you’ question describing individual careers each spanning five decades.

A few of these careers enjoyed a single lifelong employer (eg, GE, Philips, Pfizer, ESB, CRH); however, many career paths took a number of unexpected turns along the way.

Breaking out of the engineering mould and grateful for the precision engineering skills that brought diversity in later years, one ‘engineer’ would become an acclaimed artist-painter; another a commissioned woodworking artisan; four had complementary vocations, becoming published authors in their spare time. 

Others spiralled to C level, GM and board positions. It wasn’t always an immediate or ongoing success and job satisfaction, as some routinely experienced lay-offs in the course of economic cycles or mismatched aspirations before reaching their apogee.

Almost all are now happily retired (there are always a couple of diehards) and, fortunately, in good health and grateful for that first day in Merrion Street on October 13, 1964, and the career opportunity it infused.

But first of all a more enduring question was posed by the 30 writers:

Why did you choose to study engineering in the first place?

And, better yet – what advice would you give to aspiring engineering students today who may have chosen engineering from a formulaic process of elimination based upon a high honours Leaving Certificate, love of maths/maths physics, science, a knack for fixing things, perhaps influenced by a father or elder brother who was an engineer (in the pre-STEM days when lamentably few women studied engineering) –  but without much of a clue where BE graduation would lead.

The purpose of featuring these compositions is to share lifelong career experiences presented by 30 BE graduates elaborating upon 50 years of their post-Merrion Street lives.

Simply stated, in those first months at UCD engineering school, suppose you as a freshman had a magic wish – to see into the future, indeed in 30 different directions, where your life as a graduate engineer ‘could’ lead over the next five, 10, 20, and, good God, 50 years! – how surreal a wish that would be?

Yet, that is exactly the theme of 30 lads at age 70+ looking back as seasoned engineering veterans now sharing the ups and downs and excitement of their careers as they conclude whether they made the correct decision in 1964?

The then taoiseach Enda Kenny and Fionnuala Kenny with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at Government Buildings in May 2011.  Image courtesy of ucd.ie/merrionstreet – 'The Building of the State: Science & Engineering with Government on Merrion Street'.

Where did the idea for the 30 Life Journeys originate?

For decades since 1968 this close-knit class had met in groups at get-togethers in Café Clyde/ Engineers Ireland, reunions, expats returning on vacation, then by email updates on interesting activities or to honour certain accomplishments, finally upping the ante with the proliferation of WhatsApp.

From a master list of about 40 active classmates, a fortnightly Zoom session was initiated during the first spring of Covid. To provide structure for these sessions a different class member was designated to give a 50-minute PowerPoint presentation of their life journeys followed by a 10-minute discussion.

These presentations were then written up as ‘essays’, with a who’s who page (credentials of the authors), a 1964-68 Merrion Street staff page (Dean Morrissey RIP et al), a eulogy page commemorating nine dearly departed classmates, and the entire anthology illustrated with 293 photographs sharing lifelong camaraderie from 1964-2020!

So, what is the composition of this collaboration and how might it be useful as a kind of mentoring tool for today’s engineering students? 

Ten of the authors earned an MEngSc; eight received an MBA (a mix of UCD, TCD, USA universities) strategically mixing engineering qualification with business acumen, three of those a combination of MEngSc and MBA; one a PhD in in business studies focusing on human resource management, one an honorary doctorate (service to pharma industry in Ireland); indeed, one with a postgraduate master’s in theology.

Many took courses in finance/accounting and business development programs in the IMI and also in USA universities. At least one “travelled to 40 countries on business” during his career, another to 70 countries and another to 130, the latter (you know who you are!) confessing not all business-related!

A few were speakers at technology conferences in cities throughout five continents: Manila, London, Budapest, Prague, Cologne, Mumbai, Shanghai, Montreux, Cairo etc.

Another presented at the ETH in Zurich where Einstein was a student and later professor (the writer jests at the serendipity upon the realisation that he used the same chalkboard as Einstein to illustrate a point during his lecture).

Albert Einstein, 1947, Source: Wikimedia Commons.

One was invited by the White House facilities manager to work on a troublesome LAN belonging to President Ronald Reagan’s direct staff. Reportedly, the known-to-have-a-temper president ordered “… get this damn thing working!” Since James Hoban, an Irish-American was architect of the property at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was appropriate that a UCD engineer answered the call.

The largest group (10) of the ’68 class started off with General Electric USA (four on MMP, manufacturing management; three on TMP technical marketing program); two with Westinghouse; four with Siemens; two with Philips; seven with ESB; two with Post and Telegraphs/Eircom.

Later, three signed on with IDA (eventually leading to Intel, Apple, Microsoft establishing manufacturing bases in Ireland), the first non-commercial state organisation in Ireland to receive the ISO 9001 international quality standard; three with IMI; seven entered into consulting engineering practices and management consultancy positions; three developed IT careers; five became CEOs at some stage; one member of the class became president of Engineers Ireland and another member became a director of the organisation.

Throughout the anthology a typical ‘story’ – sometimes rhetorical – emerges:

What were some of the early job functions for these 30 BE graduates?

Incidentally, at least five staff members (Annraoi DePaor, Gus McGuinness; Liam D’Alton; Seamus Timony; Dean JJ Morrissey) offered guidance to these BE ’68 graduates during some of these early career projects:

Systems analyst; business analyst; humanitarian projects (NGO); healthcare management “… to fix chaotic supply chain”; “projects ranged from cutting-edge techniques to the poorest country with no machinery at all”; cybernetics; telecommunications; control systems; analyst/programmer for air navigation services; managing programs for test equipment, process control, quality management; technical marketing and sales engineering; product engineer; project engineer; production manager – heading to VP manufacturing/engineering; from maintenance engineer to chief technology officer (CTO); liaison office nuclear steam turbines; nuclear medicine, field service manager; power engineering (“I went from milliamps, dBs, signal quality to kilovolts, kA and kW”); engineering director for flight computers (737/747), military aviation electronics and missile guidance systems with JIT manufacturing and 6-Sigma; IC semiconductor manufacturing and SMD technology.

A number initiated startups such as an industrial cleaning company to provide services to oil companies; wastewater liquid solid separation equipment; green energy recovery and emission control equipment; green cement (low-carbon cement technology); open-source enterprise-software for academic institutions.

The relevance of a BE degree

 “What about the relevance of my UCD engineering degree? It gave me the skills that have been essential to my career and the versatility demanded:

• For analytical thinking – to untangle components of any problem
• For critical thinking – to understand the relative importance of those components
• For applied thinking – to find solutions that can work in the real world.

Responses when asked for advice

1) “Always have a mentor.”

2) “Many engineers develop/evolve into successful business managers where their technical background provides understanding and appreciation of engineering issues. Even in 1975 Wall Street was recruiting MBAs with technical undergraduate degrees.”

3) “Map out the type of career path you would like to pursue. Ask yourself – where you would like to be in five to 10 years. Investigate types of goals, companies and education which could help them to achieve this goal. Rely on and trust others to do their job as part of the team effort.”

4) “Although I found myself again ‘in transition’, I made good career decisions over the years ingrained in some early UCD engineering lesson.”

Why would you recommend UCD for engineering?

1. “The breadth of courses covered and subjects taught with Irish engineers are as good if not better than contemporaries anywhere in the world.”
2. “UCD lecturers were competent and we learnt how to make things work.”
3. “I was  attracted to the ‘melting pot’ in Cardinal Newman’s definition of a university where students came from all over to interact together and learn from each other. Teamwork appreciation from classmates in project work, lab work and study periods.”
4. “Pursue engineering as best door-opener to what can be a very fun, satisfying and rewarding career. Enjoy continuous learning challenges and stay flexible in life’s journey”.
5. “I had fun, great challenges and mentors, loved the work, fought the good fights, looked after my people for a job well done. UCD started me down that fortunate road.”
6. (Upon retirement:) “ Volunteering has never done anything for my standard of living, but it has done wonders for my quality of life.”

Reading through the anthology – besides careers in Ireland – you will read of BE grad experiences in Italy, Venezuela, Japan, Canada, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Qatar, Indonesia, China, Guatemala, Melbourne, UK, Copenhagen, Madrid, Turkey, S. Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia, USA, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Seychelles, Singapore, France, Egypt, Argentina, India, Tehran… the list goes on.   

We never imagined what we had created in the 30 Life Journeys anthology as a potential career primer for a new generation of engineering students.

A generic Zoom call photo: the effective and safe way to keep in touch during Covid.

Besides, it is as much a nostalgic-piece for the 1968-plus class which has communicated together at Café Clyde/Engineering Club  get-togethers, and by email, and in most recent years via WhatsApp and Zoom from that first day in 1964 through our 55th reunion this year.

Recently, some of us, on a visit from the US, enjoyed a conducted tour of the Belfield engineering and science buildings. We were amazed to enter some half-dozen of the, now 62 buildings when there were only two in our day.

Our engineering lectures and lab practice were in Merrion Street except for maths-physics in Earlsfort Terrace and the science lab in Belfield, and with only one female engineering student! Today, it is closer to 30%.

Times have certainly changed, and so has technology as you can quickly tell from the agglomeration of acronyms in any engineering journal. However, the cited anthology is timeless when you consider how 30 BE grads describe “what engineers do and have always done!” – offering a multiplicity of life experiences over, good God, 50 years!