 Hi everybody. My name is Jason Klein. I'm the Director of P20 Initiatives at Northern Illinois University, and I'm back with another episode of Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads. This is the third in our series of St. Charles local government occupations episodes, and we're excited to bring this to you. As you've already seen, if you've watched the first two, there are very, very diverse jobs in government at all levels, even in our local municipalities or county governments, school districts, park districts. There are so many different different types of people who need to make these organizations run. So our next guest, we've got Erica. Erica, thanks for joining us. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us what your job is and a little about it in yourself. Hi. My name is Erica Siddler. I work for the City of St. Charles, which is one of those cities that owns its own electric utilities. So I actually work for the electric utility. Not all electric utilities are in government, but this one is. This one is actually owned by the citizens of St. Charles. I'm an electrical engineer. I got my degree at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and I like my job a lot. So talk to us about, well, we'll do this in two separate questions. The first question, what are the things that you have to do in your job as an electrical engineer to keep the grid up and running as we're all doing our work and our living and all the things we do with electricity each day? So a lot of what I do is I work with the electric substations. I'm actually the electric substation engineer. And what our substations do is, you know how when you plug in something in your house, you have 120 volts that you're plugging it into? The substations, we have thousands of volts. We have 34,000 and then 12,000 volts at a substation. And I make sure that if a Mylar balloon flies into the electric lines that instead of burning down the whole system, it'll trip out of the circuit breaker. And then there is no big fire, for example. I also work with what's called SCADA, which is Supervisor Control and Acquisition System. And that allows us to see our entire system on a computer. So I work on that and set that up. I also make drawings for linemen to build substations or to build electric devices. So that kind of tells you the big picture of what I do. So in a normal day, what does a normal day look like for you in your work? So in a normal day, I usually have obviously several projects going. Maybe I need to buy a new transformer. It's a big device that converts electricity from 34,000 volts to 12,000 volts. So maybe I have a project where I want to buy a transformer, but I have to write a specification because you can't just go into a store to buy one. You actually have to write down exactly what you want and then you send it out to other factories to build it. So that would be like one of my ongoing projects. Another ongoing project, maybe the SCADA that I talked about needs a different screen because somebody within the electric utility would like to see something every day that it's not displayed right now, so I write the programming for that. So those are my ongoing projects. So when I come into work, I start to work on that. But then let's say one of our devices stopped communicating, so then they call me up and I have to go out there, troubleshoot, try to figure out why it stopped communicating. So there's a lot of, a lot of my days are where people call me and something's broken and I have to go fix it. And then of course I've got my ongoing projects. That sounds very familiar to me with my work in school districts leading IT where you always have ongoing projects and you always have interruptions to fix things that are broken. So with that said, you said you went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and you studied electrical engineering. What was the pathway from the university to there? Was this your first job? How did you know you wanted to study electrical engineering versus mechanical engineering, for example, or something else? Tell us more about your educational trajectory. So I actually went to Schomburg High School. I came from Hungary when I was 14 years old. It actually starts right there because I didn't speak English. So I write a Schomburg High School that would mean to all the science and math classes because science and math requires less language than, you know, language arts or writing or something like that. So I took a lot of math, chemistry and physics classes, but because my language skills were not very good, I actually ended up going to Harper College in Palatine for two years because the University of Illinois did not accept me as a freshman. So then I transferred to the University of Illinois. I spent two years there and then I stuck for two years again, well, a year and a half to get my master's degree, which I did in power distribution, which is where I work right in the electric power utility. So that was my education. I, what was the other question? So yeah, just how did you decide that you wanted to study electrical engineering then versus another kind of engineering or another occupation altogether? Yeah, so I felt that I wasn't a switch now I am but at the time I wasn't savvy. I felt like a mechanical engineer needed to be much more hands on, and I wasn't really hands on girl. You know, like I really like math. I really like to figure things out on paper and I felt electrical engineering was a lot more mathematical and more theoretical. Now that I'm actually doing my work, I love to get my hands dirty and get in there and, you know, build things and, you know, wire things up. But at the time, being 18 years old, I did not realize that, you know, there was hands on part. I thought it was more theoretical. So that's why I chose electrical engineering as opposed to another one. That's very exciting. So what, what would you say is the most exciting aspect of your job today? You know, what I love is when there is a problem and your brain just takes over and you don't even have to think about what the next step is. You just get so caught up in this problem. Nothing else exists. Until you figure it out. It's just, it's just this wonderful feeling, especially when you do figure it. But even until then, you know, it's just this relentless pursuit of figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it. That is my favorite part. That's awesome. That is a great example. Now, in all of our jobs, there are things that we have to do that maybe people who do our jobs don't like doing. Maybe you don't like doing or that people just don't know our part of our jobs. And part of this series, we want to help students understand the kind of the full range of work that we do in our jobs. So what's something in your job as an electrical engineer that you would say people either don't know you do and you would want people to know about it or that you or other people that do your work don't really like doing, but it's an important part of the job. I think every job has times when it's just kind of slow and drag. You know, you're working on a spreadsheet that is like really, really boring. I remember I had to like, so we had a consulting firm make some changes at one of our substations and they gave us drawings. The only thing I had to do was take these drawings and relabel them. So kind of make them ours. And it took me forever. It was the exact opposite of what I just described where you get kind of engaged and life stops and the problem takes over. It was the exact opposite of that. It was just a drag on and on. And that was one of those things are I get it on and it's very important because you do have drawings that are accurate, but it's just it was hard. That was hard for me. Yeah, and I appreciate that you just use the phrase it was very important because usually these kinds of things that feel like that but they're still very important and and or hopefully otherwise otherwise we ought not probably be doing them but that's a great example so thank you for sharing that. How would you say that in your estimation? What do you think the job prospects look like for people going into electrical engineering in the next five or 10 years? I think the job prospects are incredible, especially in power systems. I mean the power engineering field is. Well, there's more now there's more kids going into it now but for a long time it just wasn't an exciting field now with a lot of renewable energies there is a lot that are excited and interested but when I was going into it and for about 10 to 15 years after I went into it. But there were just very few that decide you know people would go into electronics and lasers and a lot of different aspects of electrical engineering and power. And there's a lot of people that are going to be retiring in the next 10 years or so and there is going to be huge demand for new engineers. Huge yeah and and you're absolutely right renewables only accelerates that demand or at least the demand for people who are going into the field to know maybe a wider range of things even then. Then people once new talk to us you talked about the importance of these big projects that you always have some big projects going on how do you stay organized in in the work of a big project and especially when you are juggling multiple big projects. You know in that regard my my job is not that high a pressure so I have time during the day when I can just sit for you know help an hour in the morning and just kind of organize and plan I make lists. I like to make list you know and I like to make very detailed was like if I have a really big project. I make sometimes my list all includes like you know. Call such and such person and then I write in the next line talk about such as so that I can you know scratch things up. More detailed my lists are the more able to I am to scratch something off that day so I think that's one of the things but I don't have a really big problem just you know staying on top of my projects. Cool that's important so list though would you would say lists would be your key to helping stay organized. Yeah, that's important because even even as students that kind of organization is really important as they're juggling multiple things and it's certainly a skill that for many careers will transfer directly into the workplace from the school setting. So as as we move into this a little bit deeper. What skills would you say are the most important skills to have to be successful in your work. Problem solving that that that that that desire to solve a problem to figure it out I think that is the most. The most I mean you also need good writing skills, you know to talk to people to communicate with people it is incredibly important to be able to communicate your ideas you can be the best engineer but if you can't tell others what you're thinking you'll get you know very far math obviously is important, you know, studying math, working, you know, with math that that's kind of important. Really, again, and then just, you know, enjoying puzzles is an important problem. I think that that would be the three big ones, math, English, and puzzles. Great. So how, how would you say your job has a positive impact on the world. Oh my gosh, I mean we provide electricity. It's just, but but particularly my job I mean my job and make sure that like electric outages are short that whenever there is an outage it doesn't last four hours it lasts 40 minutes you know it's part of my job. Not my only I mean we have a whole team of you know linemen and engineers and other people that that work, but so I mean I guess that that's a big impact I make sure that our equipment is not really outdated so that when things do break. So we don't have to go back 30 years to find something that could replace it that things are new and you know updated and fresh and work in today's modern with today's modern technologies so all those things make an impact on having power that is reliable. And it is very important we wouldn't be doing this with without that power right now so. I mean think about students, maybe a 14 year old a 16 year old an 18 year old a 20 year old who might be watching this kind of trying to figure out their career seeing what's out there and what what skills they're going to need. What advice would you give someone who's who's thinking about what they might want to do as a career. I would say that. If somebody would I mean again problem solving is very important. Just liking to tinker and just liking to play and build things I think that is a very big plus for people who are going into this. You know the math and the writing and the English and the stuff that you learn in school that that's an addition and you need that. But if you're one of those kids that just loves to build things that loves to, you know, play with different projects at home. I think that's that's what it is. That's really important and there are so many so many careers in the world where we need people who are creators problem solvers and builders today to solve problems for other people so that is really really a great piece of advice. Well Erica I really want to thank you for being with you your story is awesome. I love all the elements from Schomburg High School to Harper College to the University of Illinois. It's fantastic and so I won't tell you that freshman year high school had a very rough soccer game at Schomburg High School will just will just leave that out right now. And so anyways, with that said, I do really appreciate your time. Thanks for being with us and sharing your incredibly important work and you're really interesting work as you balance those big projects with those short term emergencies that you have to get out and fix. So thanks for being with us. Hey, thank you very much. My pleasure. For those of you watching, remember we are interested in we're going to continue doing this series we're actually going to continue to produce career pathways virtual trailheads throughout the summer of 2020 and build up the library in advance of the 2020 2021 school year. And so that there will be even more available. So let us know if there's a career and occupation that you're interested in learning more about. If there's someone you think would make a great guest or if you have questions you think we should be asking connect with us on Twitter at P 20 network that's at P two zero network. And we'd love to hear from you there. And we look forward to sharing more episodes with you in the future. Thanks so much.