A Little About Me...
There are times when I wish that I was more stereotypical. I don’t think anyone would consider me to be a person that goes against the orthodox, but in my own way I have always had a broad range of interests. I’m not the traditional science nerd, but I enjoy learning about how concepts interconnect – a part that is lacking in many science courses. I’m not the arts and humanities type, but I enjoy writing and history. Studying engineering was my solution, since it was applied science and had elements of so many other subjects that I found interesting – statistics, programming, technology integration, business forecasting, project management, leadership, and strong emphasis on communication skills.
Engineering was a good fit for me initially and I became highly technical. As an engineer, I would be given projects unrelated to my past knowledge-base or experience but be expected to develop a plan capable of satisfying the business needs. Each day was an opportunity to learn something new and work with different groups to extract enough information to develop my proposal. The key downside was that all my projects were disconnected from consumers. The companies that make plastics and fine chemicals are rarely discussed since their products never make it to the shelves of stores.
It was not until years after my first engineering job that I learned how to describe my work in a way that was effective in promoting myself and my field. I told people “I’m a systems engineer that determines how all the parts of a large manufacturing system work together – the raw materials, the piping, the equipment, the electronics, the computer systems, the labor, the lab tests, the shipping – to make incredibly large amounts of materials used in everyday products.” I would shorten my description based on the person's attention and if they seemed completely disinterested, I would just tell them that I design and operate multi-million dollar facilities that generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from products like wind turbine blades, soda bottles, memory foam beds, and car dashboards. Later in my career I could include products like pharmaceuticals and flat screen televisions.
For five years, I developed my skills so that I have a well-rounded understanding of K-12 and adult education. I exercised these skills by developing K-12 student programs, teacher development programs, and university student recruitment and professional development initiatives. I maintained my interest in technical areas by updating my programming skills to be more in line with web-based technologies and my statistical skills to use programming languages like R and Python. My interests in communications also increased my abilities using multimedia software like InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere, ActivePresenter, and learning management systems.
For the past two years, I have been developing my more technical skills in the data science field. I really enjoy the field since I am able to use my technical side and also tell a story. I feel that each project that I am doing is a teaching experience where I get to expand upon a topic that others may not be familiar with. Coming into this field has had a very satisfying affect on me.
I hope to continue to display my technical and non-technical skills in the future as I look to develop projects and programs.
Mr. Erin James Wills
Chemical Engineer, Education Specialist, Database and Front-end Development, Data Scientist, Project Manager, Administrator
