2015 Issue

8 I WOULD LIKE TO tell you a little about me. I grew up in a small town in Idaho called Moreland. It is located just five miles from the city of Blackfoot and about 25 miles south of Idaho Falls and 25 miles north of Pocatello. I learned frommy Father and Grandfather at an early age the value of hard work. I must admit that I did not like it all the time. However, as I continue my life’s journey, I discover over and over the value of the education I received from them. It all began when I startedworking at our family grocery store, Kesler’s Market, at age 11. My first responsibilities were facing the product on the shelves, sweeping the parking lot, cleaning everything and then sweeping the parking lot again, again and again some more. As I grew older, I was allowed to do more and more jobs at the store. I remember my first time climbing a ladder to change the marquee. I was very excited at first, but then I started climbing the ladder. My father was with me to show me how it was done and that gave me some comfort. After that one lesson from my dad, I was then given the assignment to change the marquee regularly. During the winter it became a little harder since the marquee was cold, covered with snow and up above the hard parking lot pave- ment. I learned from this experience that I could perform tasks that seemed hard, or impossible, or scary if I followed some good instruction from a mentor, and then put that instruction into practice. Before too long, I developed a desire to change the marquee to see if I could perform the task faster and with more accuracy each time. This educational experience is one of many that formed a foundation of learn- ing for me to build on. I continue to have experiences that are similar in my career today. Albert Einstein said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” I applaud all of our UEC Education of the year nominees and our MESA Teacher of the year recipient for the foundations that they are helping their students build. I have been asked many times by high school students what I think about continu- ing education after high school, if it is impor- tant, and what they could expect to get out of it. I have always answered that question with an answer that sounded something like this: “As I look back on my college experi- ence, I feel that my education was primarily to provide me with the opportunity to build the confidence and knowledge necessary to work with information that is available to me.” My college education provided me with knowledge of many subjects that related to my career choice. It also taught me how to find information that I can utilize to help me solve the challenges that come before me. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” I think that each of us can do whatever we put our minds to if we remember this great quote and “think” our way to the solutions we seek. When I began my engineering career, I was surrounded by seasoned engineers, who were willing to guide me on my path to becoming successful. I was instructed by them on many occasions to review information and prepare a written report based on the information I was reviewing. I remember taking these written reports to them for review and walking away from their office feeling like I had failed the task I was asked to perform. They would send me away with a report full of redlines of corrections for re-writing the report. There were times that I wondered if I could ever figure out how to write these reports to their satisfaction. Instead of resenting this experience, I took it as a challenge to write each report such that it would be approved with the first review. I am indebted to these colleagues for allowingme to perform tasks that I was not completely ready to complete and then teachingme how tobe thorough in my thinking about the information. Another quote from Albert Einstein supports this experience for me. He said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” I want to congratulate our Fresh Faces Nominees for their recognized success in the challenge of trying some- thing new. And to our Engineer of the Year Nominees, thank you for your continued mentoring of these new fresh thinkers that have chosen a career in engineering be- cause they care about something enough to figure out how to do it better. The Utah Engineers Council is comprised of individuals that are willing to think critically and out of the box. I am confident that the services provided by this historic council will continue to improve with each and every year. The tools that are available to us now, and that will become available in the near future, will catapult the practice of engineering into the future with new chal- lenges and successes. I am excited to see where the field of engineering goes from here. I strongly encourage each of us to find ways to increase our involvement in our individual engineering organizations. As our individual organizations improve, we will see the collaboration between all of our efforts increase, and the great state of Utah become better because of the engineering capabilities that it fosters. This begins in our elementary schools and continues on throughmiddle school, high school, and be- yond as these students choose to become change-makers who are willing and excited to think critically and think outside of the box. Thank you for all you do to encourage and foster the desire in others to join us in this wonderful and ever-changing field of critical thinking that we call engineering. See you next year! ROBERT J. KESLER, PE UTAH ENGINEERS COUNCIL CHAIRMAN, ACEC Representative, ASHRAE, ASPE Member, CAO of Heath Engineering Company Message from the Council’s Chair Think Outside the Box