Campus News
Brechbill Teams Career Center With School of Engineering to Find Top Jobs for Students

Ryan Brechbill, Career Adviser for the School of Engineering, is on a crusade. He has spearheaded a hands-on effort to unite the Career Center and the School of Engineering in helping students find and secure the jobs that best suit them. Brechbill’s in-the-trenches tactics include abandoning his Career Center office across campus twice a week and spending time at Engineering buildings, setting up informational interviews, sending out weekly flyers with employment leads and tips, and aggressively recruiting new corporate partners. Recently, Brechbill was able to take a break from the job market whirlwind to elaborate on his quest and share a few words of wisdom.

What are you focusing on doing to improve job prospects for our students?
Employer outreach is one of the biggest things we are trying to do right now, really reaching out to get more companies here and to provide more opportunities. We are trying to target not only local companies, but also national and international companies to post jobs with our office, attend our career fairs and conduct campus interview sessions.

How do you like spending time at the School?
I love to be over at the Engineering School. Last year, I had office hours at Jacobs Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students did not have to make an appointment; they could just walk in and have me look at their resume or ask me a quick question. Some-times, if I didn’t get any student traffic, I would roam the halls to see what’s going on or put up flyers — anything to get out there and be visible. Spending time with the students allows me to get to know them better, and the better I know the students, the more I am able to help them.

What advice do you give students as they begin thinking about their careers?
The first step is to explore the particular field of interest. Students can do this by interning or even just talking to people who are in that profession right now. We call that “information interviewing.” We have all kinds of contacts who have agreed to participate in these interviews. The alumni office also provides a service known as the Commodore Career Connection that has 11,000 alumni who are willing to answer questions students have about a particular profession or even a city that has piqued a student’s interest.

How important are internships for students?
They are extremely important. You’ve got to have at least one, if not two. Basically, companies want students to have that experience when they come to work so the firms don’t have to spend as much money training them.

What challenges do the School and the students face?
The size of the School is a challenge — getting companies to look at us and see that even though we have fewer students than other schools, our students offer more bang for the buck. Our students are not only strong technically, but also strong in their communication skills from our liberal arts program. That is how we sell companies on coming here, and we’ve had pretty good success so far.

What do you hear from employers about why they like Vanderbilt students?
They comment on the focus of Vanderbilt students. They know that our students have looked at their future and that they have set goals they want to achieve. They are very polished, very well prepared. They have done the research about the industry and the company. Once they have the position, they perform well.

What can alumni do to help?
Alumni are an extremely valuable resource that we need to tap. They can help by serving as career advisers through the Commodore Career Connection, posting jobs within their company with us, serving as contacts within a company, and participating in informational interviewing with the students. We are very open to exploring new ways to do things and new ideas, so we are open to anything they have to offer. We are very willing to listen to them and find ways to make their ideas happen.

Rogers Wins 2001 NSF CAREER Award

Rogers and undergraduate Virginia Wahlig

Bridget R. Rogers, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, has won the prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for her research on alternative materials that could be used to make faster and more economical computer components.

The Faculty Early CAREER Development awards are considered NSF’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. They range in amount from $200,000 to $500,000 and in duration from four to five years.

The national award, given to selected faculty for their exceptionally promising research, will enable Professor Rogers and her associates to study materials that could replace the silicon dioxide currently used in transistors and other microelectronic devices that are the heart of computers and telecommunications devices.

“The semiconductor industry is well aware that it is rapidly approaching the functional limits of silicon dioxide used in computer transistors,” Professor Rogers says. “Successful replacement of silicon dioxide is a critical step in the continued drive to build faster, lower-power, more integrated circuits.”

A layer of silicon dioxide is used to make the part of a computer transistor within an integrated circuit that plays the pivotal role in switching the transistor on or off. Professor Rogers and her multidisciplinary team are studying certain thin films made of alloys strong enough at the molecular level to replace silicon dioxide as transistors are made smaller. To study these extremely thin films, Professor Rogers designed a unique ultra-high-vacuum chemical vapor deposition reactor that deposits the alloy and allows the researchers to study their properties before they are exposed to contaminants in the air.

Professor Rogers and her associates will use an instrument called a spectroscopic ellipsometer, recently purchased through a grant from the U.S. Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, to study alloy films of aluminum oxide and zirconium oxide. The laser equipment will allow the researchers to analyze the materials in place by studying their response to varying wavelengths and angles of laser light.

The films will also be analyzed in three other Vanderbilt laboratories to determine their electrical, chemical and physical properties.

“What we’re looking for is an alloy that can deliver the strong insulating qualities required,” Professor Rogers says. “Because the probability is low that a material system can meet all the required criteria, we will need to make trade-offs between materials and study ways to work around the shortfalls inherent in the materials. We expect our research to lead to solutions to these problems for the microelectronic device industry.”

VUSE is proud to announce that Kenneth D. Frampton, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been named the fifth member of the VUSE faculty to be awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in the past two years. Frampton was granted the 2002 award for his research on “smart structures.”

Working with engineers in the Vanderbilt Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS), Frampton is developing a networked computer approach that can efficiently control complex systems like aircraft and space-based telescopes, without adding heavy, cumbersome and costly equipment.

Featheringill Hall Opens

The School of Engineering’s new Featheringill Hall combines aesthetics with state-of-the-art technology. The building, which opened in January, houses more than 50 teaching and research laboratories and is fully integrated into the vast computer resources and networks of the School of Engineering and Vanderbilt. A three-story atrium with clerestory lighting is designed to be a focal point for student interaction and social events.