I am a Senior Customer Engineer at Fleetguard for John Deere. I am the person Deere calls if they need a new filter design, have quality problems, or have questions or need testing on current filters.

The reason the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering department at NDSU is so good is because they give you a package deal. I feel I received an excellent education because I received both technical and practical training. I think most engineering programs do a fairly good job with technical training but they don't always apply it in a practical application. The professors were always looking to industry to find the latest and greatest things to bring back and teach in class. So, when I got out of academia, I had been exposed to things many other new grads hadn't.

Two other practical things stressed by the department were getting co-op experience and having good written communication skills. I had a co-op position at Melroe (Bobcat) and 2 internship positions, one at Case and one at Amity Technology. Not only do co-op jobs give you good experience and a taste of the "real world" but they also give you a chance to interview. Interviewing for my first job out of college would have been much harder if I wouldn't have had the opportunity to interview for numerous co-op and internships. Writing was something I never have liked, but I quickly learned I had to be a good writer to share my knowledge in industry. One of my first assignments at Melroe was to write test reports. Writing in class was not limited to technical papers, we also learned how to prepare a good résumé. Your résumé is the only way some companies will ever know anything about you, so knowing how to create a document that explains your qualifications, in one page, is very important.

Most of all, I think the Ag and Biosystems Engineering department did a good job of making us well-rounded, logically-thinking people that most any company would love to hire.