Aspirations Chris Coffman

As I approach the end of my college career, I still hope to gain a few skills in my final courses.  Primarily, I hope to gain a thorough understanding of system assembly as my senior design team begins to manufacture and assemble our massive GE senior project.  I think this process will be very eye opening for me, as I have never worked on a project this large and with this many moving parts.  Our budget increased immensely the past couple of months, and I really want to see what the final product is going to look like after all of our hard work. I think that this experience will give me insight into the logistics of a massive mechanical engineering assembly project, which is something I haven’t learned thus far.

I am also enrolled in a business minor senior capstone course, where our team is tasked with creating a full length business plan for a hypothetical business. This business plan will include marketing objectives, financial analysis, industry analysis, operations, and a few other types of reports.  I am very curious to see how our final plan comes out, and I hope this course provides me with a realistic startup experience.

I actually accepted an offer for my first job earlier this week.  I will be working for Raytheon in Denver as a systems engineer.  I hope this opportunity provides me with valuable engineering experiences that also have large societal and military impacts.   I am not yet 100% informed of my initial job responsibilities, but I am really looking forward to an exciting career with Raytheon.

Long term, I hope to migrate to more of a business / management type role within an engineering organization.  While I enjoy many aspects of technical work, I believe that I really thrive when I need to solve complex business problems and work with many different people. After a couple of years working as an engineer, I will reevaluate my current situation and make sure that I am still on the right path to achieve my long term career goals.

 

Previous Post
Military Surreal
Next Post
Aspirations – Chad Alvarez

4 Comments. Leave new

  • Congrats on the job! I’ve heard Raytheon is a good company to work for and since its a big organization there’s probably a lot of ability to move around and move up to managerial or higher-level systems engineering roles. Its definitely really handy to know the business side of things as an engineer, cause its something a lot of people tend to lack. Best of luck starting your new career after graduating!

    Reply
  • It sounds like you have a pretty good plan for your future! Working at Raytheon sounds like a real treat. Did you get this position from a career fair? I know Raytheon is relatively frequently there.

    For the GE project in senior design, what are the primary goals of the project for your team and for you as well?

    Hopefully with your MechE major and business minor you’ll be able to go real far using both of those as you plan! Getting a minor was a real smart decision that you made!

    Reply
  • Jacob Mccormick
    February 21, 2016 7:10 pm

    Chris, it sounds like you’ve set yourself up well for the career you want with what you’ve done in school. Congrats on the job, maybe you and Shalom can be system engineer buddies.

    Reply
  • Congrats on the job! It sounds like you’ve situated yourself well for the next couple of years at least. With a large company like Raytheon there is plenty of room for improvement and promotion, so you could definitely get into management there.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.