As digital communications continue to develop, the challenges and job opportunities
for telecommunications engineers will continue to grow.
Sharon Black has been watching the industry evolve since the 1970s when
she earned a master's degree in electrical engineering. Black was one of just
two female students out of 200 students in the program. Her bachelor's degree
was in international economics.
Black spent 25 years as a telecom engineer doing network design. She still
does a lot of that, but she has also earned a law degree and runs an international
telecommunications law firm. She teaches a course in telecom engineering at
the University of Colorado.
"What I love about telecommunications and this career is that everything
that's done in life requires communications, so you learn skills, but you
can take them wherever you want -- domestically, internationally," says Black.
"Schools use it if you want to teach, companies use it, the government, banking,
insurance, car rentals, publishing...."
Foreign countries are recognizing that telecommunications is the future.
As a result, telecommunications programs are often dominated by international
students.
For example, Black taught a master's level engineering class this past
year. "Of those 43 students, only 8 were U.S. citizens," says Black. "Other
countries are sending their best and brightest here to learn telecom."
International students tend to already have some work experience under
their belts. "Most of those students had already worked several years," says
Black. "Either they had worked for six years for a cell phone company in India
or they had been in the Chinese army." (China requires three years of mandatory
service, typically completed between high school and college).
Jim O'Gorman's career as a telecom engineer began in the 1970s. His first
job was with the telephone company. He was trained in marketing as well as
outside plant engineering. That means he was running the cables between the
central offices as well as running distribution cables from the central offices
out to the residential and commercial areas.
After eight years, O'Gorman left the phone company and went into private
consulting work. He worked on large projects for clients such as the New York
Times and the Federal Reserve Banks, advising them on the latest and greatest
in telecommunications technology.
"You really have to be able to ask questions [and] be able to understand
the big picture and explain the big picture," says O'Gorman. "I think you
have to have good verbal skills and certainly you have to have good analytical
skills."
One of Sharon Black's current roles is director for 911 emergency
services for two counties in Colorado. "I got into that because they were
trying to figure out how to incorporate the new communications into the 911
function, and then also how to reverse that so they could do mass announcements,
like with a lost child or a forest fire," Black says. "If there's an ammonia
cloud in a collision somewhere and they have to do some evacuating, that's
all done by communications."
The constant change in the telecommunications industry could be stressful
for some. But for telecom engineers such as Black, all that change is mostly
a source of excitement.
"It never gets old, it's always new," says Black. "And sometimes that's
a little frustrating, because I've said to my friends who went to medical
school, 'After 35 years in the industry, if a child comes in with poison ivy,
you've probably seen it before, you know what it looks like. Every 18 months
I get stuff I haven't seen before. I'm on a constant learning curve.'
"Now, there's obviously skills that you bring along -- it's not a completely,
absolutely new thing," Black says. "But it changes so quickly you always feel
like you're just grabbing for the end of the kite but you're kind of flying
with it. It's a wonderful career."