ENGINEERING IN ACTION

Beginning in 2022-23, CSB and SJU began offering the new engineering physics concentration within the physics major. The courses included are “things our alums have told us they do out in the field,” says Jim Crumley, chair of the physics department. “And they are things they wished they’d gotten to do more of when they were in our program.”

Deanna Suilmann ’76 can attest to the value of blending engineering education with a liberal arts influence.

One in 10 applications to Saint John’s identifies engineering as a pre-professional interest. Interest at Saint Ben’s is only about one-third as much, but it’s clear more than two decades into the 21st century that engineering is a field that draws interest and draws students.

Deanna Suilmann could’ve told you that 50 years ago, only it wasn’t really an option when she was at Saint Ben’s – let alone as she was growing up. While seemingly every other girl in her elementary school class wanted to become a nurse, a secretary or a nun, she was determined to follow in the footsteps of her father, who worked as an engineer at Honeywell most of his life.

“As a child, I remember sitting on his knee when he was reading his graduateschool books and I was just fascinated,” Deanna recalls.

She majored in biology at Saint Ben’s, then studied biochemistry and microbiology in graduate school at the University of Minnesota. She was hired as a senior laboratory technician, testing materials used for flexible circuitry in products like calculators, washers and dryers and other consumer products.

“I started noticing all these things we could improve, and I took it upon myself to say, ‘Hey, we could do this and that,’” she says. “About six months later they made me an engineer.”

“If Saint Ben’s had that when I was there, I would’ve loved the opportunity to collaborate with other students –females, especially, but males, too – who were interested in the same things as me,” Deanna says. “It would’ve been great to be exposed to that kind of thinking when I was an undergrad.”

Deanna went on to secure six U.S. patents, working at pioneering firms like Cray Research (during which she earned her engineering degree) and W.L. Gore and Associates. When the latter moved its electrical products division from Wisconsin to Delaware, she commuted via the company’s private jet for 10-day stretches over a year and a half. But as her father was losing a battle with congestive heart failure in Minneapolis, and with a husband and young son, there was no way she could keep up the travel or leave the Midwest.

She felt a calling to go into education, and spent 19 years teaching science in Menomonie, Wisconsin, and coaching a Science Olympiad team that won seven state titles.

“To get to know those students and guide them, I was really blessed to be able to do that,” Deanna says. “It’s a fantastic time to be interested in engineering. All the companies I know are looking for good people who have an aptitude for that. At Saint Ben’s, I took courses in philosophy and psychology – things I might not have gotten had I gone somewhere else and majored in engineering. But those liberal arts classes helped me reason and understand. They gave me confidence. It’s great to know that now students can get a sense of both.”