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| Home : Volume 33 : Spring 2007 : | |
| ‘Makai’: Alumna's dreams point toward the ocean | |
Sarah Smith, BSECE '06
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At age 12, Sarah Smith accompanied her mother to work at what then was the Packard Electric Division of General Motors. It was “Take Your Daughter to Work Day,” a day that included what Smith calls an absolutely fascinating engineering tour. “I learned so much that day about how the electronics in a car work and how many little things go into creating a user-friendly HMI (a human-machine interface) that I’ve been hooked ever since,” she says.
Smith earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, with an emphasis in power engineering, in December 2006. “What interests me most about power engineering is that you can really see it and touch it,” she says. “I prefer big machinery to microprocessors, and utility engineering, motors, generators, and so on have always satisfied that desire to be able to really see what makes things work.”
She was commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy December 17, 2006, and now is stationed aboard the USS Reuben James (FFG-57), a 4,000-ton warship commissioned into the U.S. fleet in 1986. Originally used for anti-submarine warfare and now used for anti-narcotic and maritime interdiction operations, the ship in October 1998 joined the “Ke Koa O Ke Kai” Destroyer Squadron 31, home-ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
There, Smith, who is the ship electronic materials officer, is learning about her weapons systems and becoming qualified to drive her. "In order to get your Surface Warfare Officer pin, you have to have a working knowledge of all of the Navy’s surface platforms—their missions, capabilities and limitations, armament, and so on, and receive qualification to stand watch in the Combat Information Center and on the bridge,” she says.
Besides learning about the ship systems and how to operate the equipment, most of the qualification process is on-the-job training, says Smith. Ultimately, she will qualify for Combat Information Center watch officer and officer of the deck—roles involving weapons, detection and driving the ship.
Smith’s division is responsible for maintaining and repairing the ship microelectronics. “Although I’m not directly involved in doing the maintenance, my managerial role requires the technical background that I have from my earlier years in the U.S. Navy, as well as my years at the UW,” she says.
The Warren, Ohio, native decided to join the Navy as a junior in high school. “I attended the National Youth Leadership Forum on Defense Intelligence and Diplomacy in Washington, D.C.,” says Smith. “I was introduced to the Navy as a career by a roommate there who had already enlisted, and I saw a video that really showed the Navy’s core values of honor, courage and commitment. I know it sounds corny, but a propaganda video made me proud to be an American and made me want to serve my country. When I came back to Warren, I went straight to the recruiter’s office.”
She enlisted in January 2001 and attended basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois. From there, she attended electrician’s mate A-school and power school in Charleston, South Carolina, for a year, followed by six months of training at the S8G prototype in Ballston Spa, New York. “After qualifying as a nuclear-trained electrician there, I was selected for the Seaman-to-Admiral 21st Century Program, which gives enlisted personnel the opportunity to receive their degrees and a commission in the U.S. Navy,” says Smith. She used the opportunity to study electrical engineering at UW-Madison for the next three-and-a-half years.
Smith, who lives on the windward side of Oahu in Kaneohe, Hawaii, when the Reuben James is in port, will conclude her current tour of duty in June or July 2008. “Now that I’m back in the fleet, I will alternate between what we call ‘topside,’ or non-engineering tours, and engineering tours, but the tools I’ve acquired in my engineering classes will translate no matter where I go,” says Smith.
In particular, she cites her realization through those classes that everything in the world is connected in some way. “The ideas of using engineering to prevent cascading faults and increasing reliability with redundancy can be applied across a broad spectrum of careers and daily events,” she says. “Troubleshooting throughout a design process is also valuable in everyday situations. Even though these were often painful lessons to learn, they are lessons that I will take with me throughout my life.”
During her next sea tour, Smith will be a nuclear power officer onboard one of the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. “Being able to have a big-picture idea of how the plant works and being able to understand how the electricity we generate is distributed throughout the ship are very valuable concepts on which I will have a head start,” she says. “If I ever decide to leave the Navy, I’ll have my formal education and real-life experience in power engineering to draw from as I start a new career.”
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Date last modified: 05-Jun-2007
Date created: 05-Jun-2007
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