Meet 23-year-old control systems engineer Jennifer Laffoon

Laffoon says every day on the job at Mittal Steel she uses the programming skills she learned in her Purdue Calumet classes.

Hard hats, red-hot steel, safety glasses, steel-toed boots, and buildings and machinery of prehistoric proportions; these offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of control systems engineer Jennifer Laffoon at Mittal Steel's #3 Steel Producing plant in East Chicago.

Mittal Steel hired the 23-year-old Griffith native shortly after she graduated from Purdue Calumet in May 2006 with a baccalaureate degree in electrical engineering.

Laffoon said her love of math and science and a desire for a career that would provide opportunities to continuously work on new projects are what led to her choice of majors.

The choice to attend Purdue Calumet was an easy one for Laffoon. She valued being able to stay close to family, work part-time and get a good education with fewer expenses.

"I liked (Purdue Calumet) because of smaller classes," she said. "I had mostly the same classmates in all my classes, so we got to know each other. It made it easier for group projects."

Laffoon said she found the professors and the advisors to be, not only helpful, but also accessible. She credits Purdue Calumet Professor of Electrical Engineering David Kozel's classes for helping reveal how much she enjoyed computer programming.

"The more we did, the more I saw that I liked it-kind of had a knack for it," she said.

Laffoon said every day on the job she uses the programming skills she learned in her Purdue Calumet classes. A typical day at Mittal Steel, depending on current projects, would include meeting with contractors and working on HMI (Human Machine Interface) screens. These are the computer control screens used by the operators who make the steel.

"That's the goal; to prepare them for the real world," Kozel said.

While at Purdue Calumet, Laffoon was involved as a group leader and mentor with the Engineering and Science Summer Program for middle school and high school students. She said it was a 2 ½ month program designed for underprivileged kids from local communities to help them develop a desire to attend college and pursue career interests in science- and engineering-related fields.

Laffoon continues to look to the future with her sights set on a master's degree.

"With an MBA and an engineering degree," she said, "I could pretty much go anywhere."