Sky's the Limit at Boeing for MESA Alum

MESA Connect
Winter 2005

Industry has long called for better collaboration skills from employees in order to solve complex business and engineering problems. Yet college graduates have been taught through the competitive grading system to work hard on their own to achieve results.

MESA, through its academic excellence workshops, course clustering and study centers, seeks to bridge that gap by providing a team-building environment that demans high performance but also fosters cooperation -- precisely the combination that industry is seeking.

MESA Engineering Program alum Dyrk Daniels' experience would seem to suggest that strategy is working. A 17-year old veteran of the aerospace industry, Daniels has just been promoted to project supervisor of a design engineering team of 35 people from the U.S. and Canada to develop an entire section of Boeing's new 7E7 "Dreamliner," which upon its scheduled completion in 2008, will be on eof the world's most advanced passenger airplanes.

"The challenges you face as an engineering undergrad can be very intense, and MESA came at a critical time for me when I was dealing with more advanced course material. I think being in an environment with similar students who worked together and shared the same goals really helped me through my junior and senior years in college," said Daniels, a 1978 CSU Fullerton graduate. "The confidence and encouragement I got from MESA gave me the boost I needed. It really worked."

Achieving his dream also took a lot of hard work.

The son of a U.S. Marine, Daniels was born in California and lived in various places in the country before returning to the golden state at the age of 14. After completing his studies at Fullerton, he secured a position at Lockheed, where Daniels worked in military applications for three years on land-based, long-range, anti-submarine warfare patrol and anti-surface warfare aircraft.

After joining Boeing in 1990, Daniels switched to commercial applications and began working on the door mechanism for the 777, which entered production in 1994 and is now the largest twin-engine aircraft on the market.

Over the next 10 years, Daniels worked on the 737, 747, 757, and 767. His penultimate position - as senior lead engineer on the 767 tanker, a derivative of the military mid-air refueling aircraft - provided the springboard he needed to become project supervisor for the new 7E7.

On the 7E7, Daniels is supervising a section of people who are part of a larger consortium that includes workers from Italy, Japan, Sweden, and Australia. In addition to phone, fax and e-mail, members are using advanced web conferencing technologies and Computer Aided Design tools to share information and update progress across time zones.

"A truly global engineering effort with so many different cultures makes existing methodologies cumbersome and ineffective," said Daniels. "In order to collaborate effectively, we have to have better understanding, communication and focus. We must not confuse hearing with listening. If you listen well enough, you realize there are a lot of brilliant people in the world whose native language and culture is different from your own."

Daniels is something of an amalgam himself, being of German, Irish, African-American and Native-American descent. He is now based at Boeing headquarters in Everett, Washington, and lives with his family in Woodinville, about 30 miles north of Seattle.

He believes MESA provided an important vehicle along the road that has led him to his current success.

"MESA provided me with confidence, encouragement, and motivation to pursue my engineering dreams of working in the aerospace community," said Daniels. "The team building and sense of community you get are a powerful incentive to succeed."