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June 2024 #16299 Page #114
The Birth of a Professional Engineer: Forging a Career at Simpson Strong-Tie By Dante Khachadourian
y engineering journey began back in the early 2000s in the living room of our house, playing with wooden blocks and building towers as high as I could reach without letting them fall over onto little brothers (the authorities having jurisdiction [aka my parents] had a set a restriction in our home on the maximum height of unreinforced wood block structures). My nascent construction skills could have gone towards either architecture or engineering, but thankfully the latter won out as I evolved into a Lego fan, like many aspiring engineers. Pop is a civil engineer, so whether my tendencies toward engineering were founded primarily in nature or nurture may forever be in debate as I was encouraged to consider engineering as an enjoyable, profitable and generally amazing way to become an upstanding member of the community.
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When I came of high school age (I was homeschooled K-12), I expressed my interest in engineering, and additional rigor ensued as I focused on STEM classes, and my parents accelerated my curriculum so that I could begin taking Advanced Placement tests before starting college. I also started taking classes full time at Modesto Junior College during my senior year. After taking a one-year stint at MJC, I transferred to CSU Sacramento. There I plunged full force into the general engineering and civil engineering classes, glad to have the general education courses behind me. In my senior year, I finally was able to take eagerly awaited elective design classes like wood, steel, and concrete design, with of course the associated labs that allowed us to touch, smell, and build with the materials we discussed in the classroom and learned from the white board. Those classes gave that final reassurance to me that I had chosen the right profession, because despite the long days and short nights, I loved what I was doing. I especially appreciated that most civil engineering classes at Sacramento State were taught by licensed engineers, who had real-world experience that they incorporated into the classes. Many of them (Dr. Fell, Dr. Armstrong, Dr. Fogarty) were also kind enough to give me extracurricular advice on my future and my transition there from college. It was during my senior wood design class that I first encountered Simpson Strong-Tie on a professional level, when Professor Scott-Hallet had a Simpson guy named Sam Marcoux come in and talk about engineering with our class. In my entire college experience, Simpson was the only company that ever came into a classroom to speak to us, and it made a distinct impression on me, that these Simpson people thought that students were worth the time and efforts to go out of their way and to engage with us.
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