[AT] Agricultural Engineers was kill a tractor company and get a pardon

[Cecil Bearden]

I interviewed for Hesston corp a couple of years after graduation.  
Spent half a day touring the factory in Kansas that made straw choppers 
for combines.  Finally the guy told me ( in the parking lot) that he 
would love to hire me but I would hate the job as I would always be 
fighting the other engineers to provide access points to maintenance.   
He also told me to find a small short line factory/fabricator because I 
had been on the farm too long to make it in the world of cost driven 
engineering.
I went to work as a water engineer for the state of OK 3 months 
later...  I had only taken one course in surveying in Ag Engineering.  I 
had convinced my advisors that I was going to work for a manufacturer 
and specialize in hydraulic power technology..    Most ag engineers go 
to work as civil engineers or mechanical engineers after graduation.  
Our courses are a combination of civil and mechanical with a slant 
toward farming and the special analysis it requires.  Now the department 
is labeled Agricultural and bio systems engineering.  I saw red when 
they changed the name as I had fought for recognition as an agricultural 
engineer in every engineering group at the time...  I got so irritated 
that I gave up on all of the professional societies and in 1987 I took 
the P.E. test in Oklahoma for Civil Sanitary and Structural engineering 
due to long established practice and passed with one of the top highest 
scores in the last 20 years I was told..  I then took every engineering 
training course that the Army Corps of Engineer, Soil Conservation 
Service, and the Bureau of reclamation.   In 1998 the OK board of 
registration decided to audit my professional development hours. I 
submitted 857 hours for their review and they determined that I had the 
required 32 in the last 2 years!!!   In 2007 I took early retirement and 
went into consulting.  The first 2 years were pretty lean, but now I can 
make as much in one short week as I did in a month and not have to put 
up with the head cases I had to work with....  Anyone who has worked in 
a large organization knows what I mean..
Cecil

On 5/18/2019 7:42 AM, James Peck wrote:
>
> I encountered a man with a new JCB ag equipment dealership in central 
> Ohio around 2008. He had come to Ohio State to study Agricultural 
> Engineering and stayed on as an invisible immigrant. I had to listen 
> to him for a couple of sentences to realize his was not the accent of 
> Virginia. Hope he made it.
>
> What kind of courses does an Agricultural Engineer study that makes 
> them better suited for tractor design than a Mechanical Engineer?
>
> I once wanted to go to work for DeLorean. You got farther than I did.
>
> [Cecil Bearden] <snip> I worked my butt off trying to go to work for 
> MF when I graduated college with a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering<snip>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> AT at lists.antique-tractor.com
> http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.antique-tractor.com/pipermail/at-antique-tractor.com/attachments/20190518/18cdad8d/attachment.htm>