(546b) Professional Service: A Rewarding & Cautionary Tale

The helping profession aspects of engineering can bring a great sense of purpose and joy to the chemical engineering workplace. An engineer can often discover and implement small improvements, and then see them directly benefit a great many lives, when implemented on a large scale. Professional service gives a similarly motivating and addictive aspect to our occupations. In this talk I will discuss lessons learned through a history of working with our engineering community to find those small but impactful improvements through professional service. I will discuss strategies that I have found effective for getting involved in and creating new ground in professional service activities. Service, though, can go wrong--mistakes have been made--and this talk will end with reflections on how to avoid some tempting professional service pitfalls that I wish I had avoided.