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A better understanding of career choices was the big reward for John Ricketts ’03, who spent three days at Air Products and Chemicals shadowing William R. Koch ’68, Air Products’ global director of process integrity, a post-Sept. 11 position addressing anti-terrorist issues.
“I set up interviews with a wide variety of young engineers at Air Products so John could get an understanding of what kind of positions engineers hold within the company,” says Koch. “He could ask questions and get a sense of what it’s like. He was very enthusiastic. Though he’d had one or two summer jobs, he’d never done hard-core engineering. We use engineers to do just about everything, including sales.”
Ricketts, an A.B. engineering major, says he picked up some valuable knowledge of the chemical industry during the externship at the Allentown company. Ricketts met with people throughout Air Products, toured the facilities and learned about jobs in sales, design, development, research, and management.
“Mr. Koch was extremely helpful in providing information about Air Products and what his career has been like,” says Ricketts. “The program was very beneficial in showing me how a real company operated and different paths that my career could possibly take.”
One of the things Ricketts found interesting was that Air Products is one of the biggest producers in the world of nitrogen for food processing, supplying liquid nitrogen to freeze the hamburgers for McDonald’s as well as many other foods.
“This process holds in the flavor of the food much better than regular freezing and is completely safe because nitrogen naturally exists in the air,” says Ricketts. “I was able to learn about it and see how this process worked.”
Ricketts is a varsity football player and risk manager of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity.
An externship at Air Products and Chemicals allowed John Ricketts ’03, an A.B. engineering major, to shadow William R. Koch ’68, global director of process integrity, and explore the variety of choices for a career in engineering.