Sunday, January 20, 2013

Fajitas!!! ... I mean AIChE

Tuesday night I went to a meeting for the MSU chapter of AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers). About twice a month, AIChE would gather and invite representatives from different companies to give presentations. Many of the representatives are MSU engineering alumni who talk in depth about what they do at their jobs, give specific information about their company, and answer any questions that people may have. There are similar groups for other engineering majors to network and learn about jobs in their fields. Most of the time, the companies also give us food!!! GM provided Noodles & Co at the SWE meeting on Wednesday, and Bemis provided the fajita bar from Moe's Southwest Grill that you see in the picture below:


At this meeting, two representatives from Bemis presented. Bemis makes a lot of materials used to package everyday items. Both of the representatives were engineers that worked on optimizing and producing a special type of film for meat packaging. They elaborated on the processes of producing the different types of film and how they adjusted the films to fit their customers' needs.
 
I like going to AIChE because I get to learn about different companies and what kinds of jobs chemical engineers do there. Going to these meetings helps me decide what companies I might want to intern with or work for. Even if I do not find the presentation suitable for me, the experience is still valuble because it helps be determine what kinds of jobs I do not want to do. After going to this meeting, I now know that I do not want to engineer films and materials for packaging food, and I was able to figure this out while eating a tasty fajita!