Tag: Boeing

Pandemic forces unexpected route to graduation for OCAST intern

OCAST interview with Ella Luttbeg, TU from OCAST on Vimeo.

 

Editor’s note: Along with Debbie Cox, my colleague from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST), I recently interviewed Ella Luttbeg via the Zoom platform. Ella is a graduating senior at the University of Tulsa.

Ella Luttbeg was wrapping up some major projects as she prepared to graduate this spring as a mechanical engineering major from the University of Tulsa.

A senior capstone project neared its conclusion, as did an OCAST internship at Tulsa’s Triumph Aerostructures that she had held since October 2018.

A job at Boeing’s Oklahoma City operation awaited in June after her May graduation.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic threw some major roadblocks in her path. As the wave of Coronavirus infections washed over the nation in March, social distancing measures shuttered businesses, closed campuses and forced students like Luttbeg back to their homes to remotely complete the semester.

For Ella, home is Stillwater, where she graduated from high school before enrolling at TU as a freshman in 2016. Her parents are both biology professors at Oklahoma State University.

Luttbeg negotiated the roadblocks and finished out both the senior project and the OCAST internship.

“School wise, everything is remote, and our senior project kind of ended in a different fashion than we expected it to,” Ella told me in a recent interview over the Zoom platform. “So far, the pandemic hasn’t affected my job offer, which I’m grateful for.”

“I think something that really helps is seeing older college or professional women talking about their careers and getting excited about math and science and showing that it is a cool thing to be interested in. Having role models to look up to really helps people believe it’s something that they can achieve, as well.”
— Ella Luttbeg on inspiring more women to pursue STEM careers

During the OCAST internship, Luttbeg tackled a variety of engineering projects for Triumph Aerostructures related to fatigue and damage tolerance analysis in aircraft structures.

“I was lucky enough to be able to work from home for Triumph during the pandemic,” Ella said. “They were able to get me a laptop to remote in. It’s been different, but I’ve really been grateful to keep my internship.”

Luttbeg was one of two OCAST interns this academic year working at Triumph Aerostructures, a division of Triumph Group. Triumph is a publicly traded, global leader in manufacturing and overhauling aerospace structures, systems, and components.

“My time at Triumph Aerostructures has been super valuable to me, because it’s given me the opportunity to supplement my school studies with real world experience,” she said. “At Triumph, I worked with really smart engineers who taught me a lot about stress and fatigue and damage tolerance analysis. It exposed me to a whole different side of engineering.”

Ella Luttbeg

Luttbeg developed her interest in pursuing an education in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – while still in high school. She credits Larry Hesler, a high school math teacher, for stoking that interest, and college professors John Henshaw, Ph.D., and Steve Tipton, Ph.D., for mentoring her through the engineering program.

“I’ve always been interested in math,” she said. “Both my parents are scientists, so I’ve always been kind of exposed to the STEM world. Then at TU, my classes have shown me what engineering is all about.”

She learned about the OCAST intern opportunity through an email that TU’s engineering department sent to its students. TU is a long-time participant in the OCAST Intern Partnership program, which places students in real world R&D settings on a cost-share basis.

“I would definitely tell future/current college students to be on the lookout for the OCAST internships because they are a great way to be able to work part time during the school year and over the summer,” Luttbeg said. “I’m so thankful to have this opportunity to have this OCAST internship. It’s meant a lot to me and supplemented my education.”

Oklahoma’s Saab story: a prophecy fulfilled

I hope you saw this story in Monday’s editions of The Oklahoman about the Saab Group, a Swedish Aerospace firm, reportedly passing on Oklahoma as the location to build a new military trainer jet because of workforce concerns.

If you didn’t read it, click this link to catch you up to date: 

The reporting by Oklahoman reporter Dale Denwalt made the words of Oklahoma City businessman Phil Busey seem almost prophetic. The story quoted State Sen. Adam Pugh, who said that the Saab Group decided it would not be able to find enough skilled workers to sustain its workforce at an Oklahoma location.

Saab reportedly wanted to know if it could find people to work at the plant. ‘In the end, they decided they couldn’t, and so they’re taking their business somewhere else,’ state Sen. Adam Pugh told members of Leadership Oklahoma at a recent aerospace forum.

Busey is founder and CEO of a company called Delaware Resource Group (DRG), minority-owned aerospace industry federal defense contractor. DRG employs upwards of 700 people, including software engineers, worldwide who support contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as major aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Mr. Busey along with Debbie Cox, my colleague from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). Our interview was the basis for an OCAST video and a column I wrote on behalf of the agency. You can read it and watch the video interview here. 

We were surprised by the urgency that Busey showed in advocating for an improvement in public education and workforce development across our state.

Phil Busey

“Our challenges really come back to the issues of workforce development,” Busey told us. “Public education is the No. 1 challenging issue we see here in Oklahoma.”

Thousands of aerospace positions in the state remain unfilled because there aren’t enough Oklahomans equipped with STEM skills – science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Busey said.

That means that we need to build a deeper pool of young Oklahomans equipped with STEM skills that are critical to the sustainability of the state’s aerospace industry.

But it goes beyond workforce development, he said. It’s also about the image of our state that is reflected in legislation like the recent open carry law that allows virtually anyone in Oklahoma to carry a gun without a license or shooter education.

“The challenge is that we are having to rebrand ourselves,” Busey said. “The social legislation issues, the open carry issues and the public education issues all have to be addressed. Because people really don’t understand who we are … We have to talk to them about what our culture is really like, who we are, what kind of values we have, that we are inclusive, that we have all types of development going on with MAPS and the successes we have had downtown.”

The bottom line is that there are currently between 1,500 and 2,000 open positions here in Oklahoma in the high paying aerospace industry. We have to fill that pipeline.

Busey has organized his own working group of community, education and business leaders to brainstorm ways to enhance Oklahoma’s workforce development and improve our image.

“We’re trying to develop pipelines with our universities,” Busey said. “And then be able to talk with people who we need to recruit from outside Oklahoma that it is a good place to live. We all don’t walk around with 45s on our hips. Public education, we have to do something to improve that. It is a deal breaker.”