AEDC team members prepare for a future in engineering

  • Published
  • By Raquel March
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  Two recent college graduates employed at AEDC prepare for their future engineering careers by participating in a Jacobs Future Weekend event.

Nathan Sindorf, an electrical controls engineer, and Billy Stack, a systems engineer, with the prime contractor ATA, were selected to attend the event held in Texas through the Jacobs Future Network. The network is a global program for Jacobs employees who have recently graduated from a university and joined the company. Jacobs is one of the managing partners of the ATA prime contract at AEDC.

Sindorf and Stack were the first ATA employees to participate in the annual event which included teambuilding events with other international Jacobs employees.

"We were very excited and grateful to represent ATA at this event for the first time," Sindorf said. "We really appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the Jacobs organization while building relationships with employees from 21 countries, including the Netherlands, Australia, Morocco and England."

The engineers were chosen from thousands of graduates within Jacobs. To decrease the participant selection to 200, each region's group vice president or senior vice president confers with the region's leadership to identify graduates who demonstrate great potential in the organization.

Sindorf and Stack began their careers at AEDC as interns. Sindorf will mark his two year anniversary with ATA next month and Stack has worked with ATA for 10 months.

Stack said, "Just as it was exciting to learn about other groups within Jacobs, it was also very rewarding to be able to share the mission of AEDC with others while re-instilling within us a sense of pride in our own work.

"We do fascinating work here at AEDC and it's often easy to forget that; we enjoyed being able to 'wow' our counterparts from other business sectors."

Sindorf credits his great experiences at AEDC to the people he works with.

"No matter what I'm working on, there's always someone there to help mentor me through it," he said. "I've definitely learned and grown a lot in the last two years and I look forward to continuing to learn so that I can help others in the same way."

Both engineers expressed that the event provided them the opportunity to learn more about what it means to be a Jacobs' team member.

Stack said he would tell graduates entering the workplace, "not to be afraid to get out and explore areas outside their job description, learn about the history of where you work, put your hand up and volunteer, and most importantly, take an initiative and do not become complacent."

Sindorf remembered the advice given at the Jacobs Future Weekend by Jacobs' President Craig Martin - "If it's going to be, it's up to me," - and said this is advice that he would use.