Twenty-five civil engineering students and five professors from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology traveled to Indianapolis on May 18 to tour several Citizens Energy Group facilities and construction sites as part of the school’s Introduction to Engineering Design class.
Each year, the class’s instructors engage a Rose-Hulman alumnus to facilitate tours of various infrastructure improvement projects. This was their second year to partner with Citizens through our Partnership for Excellence in Research and Learning (PERL) program.
The visit centered on DigIndy and was coordinated by Jessica Bastin, a Rose-Hulman alumna and Manager Engineering at Citizens. Bastin is passionate about sharing what Citizens does with the next generation of engineers, saying, “The water/wastewater field is facing a serious shortage in talent, and it is so important for us to show how exciting and impactful our work can be.”
The group started their day with a tour of the Deep Rock Tunnel Connector Pump Station conducted by Construction Specialist VI John
Morgan. From there, the students and professors were treated to a tour of the Southport Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant with
Manager Resource Recovery Daphne Chiu and Director Plant Engineering Matt Thomas, whose father is a former Rose-Hulman professor.
From the south side of Indianapolis, the group traveled north to Brookside Park, where they took a tour of the Upper Pogues Run CSO
storage facility with Construction Specialist V Nick Maynard and Engineer I Joe Nagy. Their final stop was downtown, where Maynard and Nagy gave them a tour of the Lower Pogues Run drop shaft site, which has quite an impressive view of Lucas Oil Stadium!
About the visit, Bastin said, “Being freshmen, the students really didn’t have much of a background in infrastructure or projects of this
magnitude. They seemed a bit overwhelmed at first. But by the end of the visit, they were asking thoughtful, meaningful questions, and it was obvious that what they experienced had expanded their view of what a fulfilling career in engineering could entail.”
