[Film projector starting up]
>> Lynn: When I thought about what I most enjoyed growing up, it was going to my family's cabin
and being outdoors in the environment and so I wanted the work that I
did to be involved in continuing to protect the environment.
[Teacher speaking]
You know the University of Michigan just has such a great program for civil and environmental engineering and when I
met with different academic advisors I really liked the work that Lutgarde
Raskin was doing looking at biofilms and trying to be protective of public health.
>> Jordon: That's awesome. Lut's actually
my one of my professors right now from my engineering lab.
>> Lynn: Cool. When I was a graduate student, I was a teacher, the TA,
for that lab and went to the Ann Arbor wastewater treatment plant and collected samples and
took them to my car, to the labs.
>> Jordon: How did you decide on grad school?
>>Lynn: I wasn't ready to be done with school yet, right? I was enjoying it and having fun and
really liked the learning, still, and thought, I want to learn more to be better at this job.
I saw that you were involved in Blue Lab, I'm involved in Blue Lab as well.
So I'm looking forward to like that that main aspect of like talking with community leaders,
talking with the community and figuring out the best ways to solve these issues that are,
you know, hurting the communities today.
>> Lynn: Yeah, I would say the work we did in Guatemala really was the highlight. We
built these biosand filters and implemented them into schools, and that was an incredible
learning experience. We built them with the community. So they spoke Q'eqchi'
and you know my Spanish is just okay, so it was two languages removed. But you know,
once we did water quality testing and they could see the petri dishes and the bacteria, right,
the fecal and total coliform testing we did, and we could explain, okay this is your rain water,
this is your boiled water, this is what's coming out of the biosand filter, here's the river;
you could tell based on people's reactions that they were getting it and it was, you know, helping
them understand that connection. So I've taken that those lessons learned into what I do now.
I work for Brown and Caldwell. It's an environmental consulting firm.
I work on projects all over the country. I've actually worked with the same company
all the 12 years since I graduated. So I started out as a staff engineer doing drinking water and
waste water projects and doing more kind of field work and sampling and, you know,
learning. Now i'm more focused on drinking water and recycled water for potable and
indirect potable reuse. I'm the pilot study lead for the Portland Water Bureau.
Currently the City of Portland's water supply is unfiltered, but they've gotten cryptosporidium
hits in their watershed and are now adding a filtration system. So iI've been helping with
a team of people, great people that I'm working with, to inform a new greenfield 145 MGD water
treatment plant. I don't think, you know, I could have foreseen all the opportunities that I've had.
>> Jordon: Yeah for me jumping from high school to college
like that was a big step from looking how I was in high school to being at the University
of Michigan and the stuff that I wanted to get involved in. Every time someone asked
where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years, 15. I don't know. I don't know.
>> Lynn: That's a hard question. I don't know if I know either. You don't have to
have the whole future, you know, laid out. I know lots of people who are similar to
me or even later on that are still figuring it out and and that's okay.
>> Jordon: What would you say would be like the main advice you'd give to students in
environmental engineering to like get involved with these things after they
leave Michigan, whether it be from their undergrad or their graduate degrees.
>> Lynn: You know, I found a lot of value from getting my graduate degree
in Michigan. And I think that really gave me a leg up to do the type of work that I wanted to do.
And so that was a huge benefit. You're absolutely doing the right thing by looking at internships. I
did several internships throughout my undergrad and between undergrad and grad school to try
to figure out what what part of, you know, environmental engineering do I want to do.
I stressed out a lot about where my future was going and where my future was taking me
and you know the options with jobs and employers and I think I stressed out too much.
You know you can try something and if it doesn't work out, that's okay,
you know don't worry. It's gonna work out just fine and you're gonna have a lot of fun doing it.
[Introspective
music]