For the past decade, Celeste Baine has been attempting to hook high school students on engineering.
Through her Oregon-based company, Engineering Education Service Center, she leads workshops for both students and teachers, develops curricula for middle and high school students and even sells kitschy engineering-themed pins and shirts on the EESC website.
She’s also published more than two dozen engineering career guides.
Her latest — “The Green Engineer: Engineering Careers to Save the Earth” — explores a plethora of job opportunities in the eco-minded economy.
“I look at these career guides from a different perspective. I like to actively ask the reader: ‘What is it that you really like to do?’ and lead them to the kinds of engineering jobs that involve those things,” says Baine. “I feel like Millennials are very altruistic. So this book is an attempt to match that altruism with a career in engineering.”
In a brief 146 pages, “Green Engineer” profiles careers in alternative fuels, public transportation, environmental building construction, resources management and more. Each chapter includes a summary pinpointing specific jobs within the field and the training required for each of them.
“A lot of people don’t think of engineering and sustainability as tied together. But almost every kind of engineering is dealing with questions of sustainability,” says Baine. “If students are interested in a green career, there isn’t a specific degree they need. They should get out there and do the thing that is most fascinating to them, and link it back to green engineering when they’re looking for employment.”
