Change Agent
A young engineer leads by example to raise the profession’s profile and boost participation of tech-savvy millennials like her.
By Mark Matthews
At 33, Kodi Jean Verhalen is the youngest incoming president ever to lead the National Society of Professional Engineers, and she has taken on those who deride her generation as “entitled, lazy, narcissistic, and addicted to social media/their phones.” Last October, she approvingly retweeted a LinkedIn article, “Why Millennials Keep Dumping You: An Open Letter to Management.” In February, she offered her own advice at a meeting of the National Academy of Building Inspection Engineers in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Don’t give them only the YE (young engineer) or EIT (engineer-in-training) positions,” Verhalen urged. “Value their input and participation. Use their technological prowess to your advantage.” Above all, she said, “don’t spend all your time telling them what they should be doing” and instead become “friends and mentors.”
Verhalen says she sought the presidency “to show people like me—young professionals—you can be involved at all levels” and that “it doesn’t mean you have to wait through a 20-year career.” Still, she rose within NSPE the old-fashioned way: years of active service and increasing responsibility. She joined the Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers in 2001 as a sophomore—three years before earning a bachelor’s in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota–Duluth. Becoming a member of the MnSPE executive committee in 2005, she went on to serve as secretary-treasurer, vice president, and president, and won a Young Engineer of the Year award. She segued into national office as a House of Delegates member in 2010, was named a Fellow the following year, and served on various NSPE leadership committees.
Only the third woman to lead the NSPE since its founding in 1934, Verhalen doesn’t think engineering is necessarily unfriendly to females. “I can’t speak for all women, but sometimes the mantra that engineering isn’t hospitable and welcoming can be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says.
As president, she’ll be the public voice of a 32,000-member society striving to raise its profile as protector of the engineering brand. Last year, NSPE called out the Environmental Protection Agency for lapses in reopening the abandoned Gold King Mine in Colorado, demanding that federal agencies use licensed professionals for engineering projects. The mine blowout spewed 3 million gallons of acidic water laced with heavy metals into nearby rivers and sent an orange plume full of heavy metals into neighboring Utah. At a hearing, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), an NSPE member, scolded EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy: “This is a serious matter that you should have had a professional design person in charge of.”
NSPE also decries what its current president, Timothy Austin, has called a “pilfering” of the engineer title by industry software developers. He notes “the very real potential for great harm” if unqualified people design artificial intelligence systems affecting public safety. Professional engineers, the society says, should have a leading role to ensure “the same attention to safety and reliability that went into the built transportation infrastructure is incorporated into autonomous vehicles and smart transportation systems.”
While circumspect about plans for her one-year term, Verhalen wants to see an increase in students taking the Fundamentals in Engineering exam, a first step toward a license. At present, only about half of engineering graduates in any given year have taken the FE exam. “Students should be as equipped as possible for all opportunities” open to engineers, she says.
For Verhalen, opportunity took an unusual turn—into law. While an EIT at a Minnesota electricity generation and transmission cooperative, she worked in the environmental services department under a manager with a law degree. “She told me it gave her a more in-depth understanding of rulemaking and legal implications,” says Verhalen. Further encouragement came from attorneys she worked with in getting a route permit for an electrical line. The multi-tasking whiz obtained her PE license midway through William Mitchell College of Law while also working fulltime. A self-described “engineer in a lawyer’s body,” she now represents energy and utility clients at Briggs and Morgan, a Twin Cities law firm.
NSPE has from time to time found itself at the intersection of engineering and law—perhaps most famously in 1978, when the Supreme Court found that the society’s ban on competitive bidding for engineering services violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. More recently, the society has fought state legislative attempts to open up the profession to those whom NSPE considers unqualified to protect public health and safety.
“The greatest challenge we face—and it’s a challenge all professions face—is to make sure we’re communicating the value of our profession to the public, so they understand why we’re here,” Verhalen says. Getting her millennial peers on board would be a huge leap in that direction.
Mark Matthews is editor of Prism.
Image Courtesy of Kodi Jean Verhalen