Rebecca Krieg, Engineering Technology, Class of 2016

 

Rebecca Krieg, an Honor's Program dean's list student, immensely enjoyed the past four years she spent in Philadelphia earning her BS in mechanical/manufacturing engineering technology at Temple. "There is so much culture that you just don't see in my small German Catholic community," says Krieg, who hails from St. Marys in northwestern Pennsylvania's remote Elk County. "It really helped me see more sides of people."

 

But her small town is calling her back.

The appeal is two-fold. first, since her grandfather passed away a decade ago, she has helped operate her family's farm, which includes 60 black Angus cattle—and about 200 acres of hay fields to feed them. "Farming helped me with engineering because on a farm, things break down and you have to figure out how to fix them," she says.

Secondly, notes Krieg, St. Marys is the powdered metal capital of the world. The process involves compacting metal powders and heating them to produce high quality metal parts.

"After talking to local engineers, I switched to the engineering technology program at Temple because it was more hands on and more applicable to the powered metal manufacturing process," says Krieg, who worked an overnight oven shift at Keystone Powdered Metal during the summer of 2015. This past summer, she was an engineering intern with another local firm, the Metaldyne Performance Group.

"My materials and machine elements classes have been really relevant," she notes, "and it was cool to see how much of my quality control class related to the quality control work I did this past summer."

Next year, Krieg hopes to work again for one of her home town's powdered metal firms—until she enters one of the four Pennsylvania law schools that recently accepted her. Her goal: to practice law in St. Marys while also staying involved with her family's farm.

"Both engineering and law involve the same thought processes," says Krieg. "You start with a theory or an application and work your way through it to get the result you need. Engineering and law are both hard, but Temple engineering has given me the confidence to think I can succeed in law school as well."