Daniel Olejniczak is earning his undergraduate degree from the UMSL/Washington University Joint Undergraduate Engineering Program, as well as a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College, this month. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

When Daniel Olejniczak was growing up, conversations around the dinner table often revolved around engineering and problem-solving.

Both of his parents attended Missouri University of Science and Technology and worked as engineers – his father as an electrical engineer and his mother as a chemical engineer – and he developed a love of math and science from an early age. His father was particularly passionate about his career and would often discuss different problems he was trying to solve when he got home from work.

“That spurred me toward engineering,” Olejniczak said. “When I was young, I wanted to be an inventor, and engineering is pretty close to that. You’re solving real-world problems, whether it be a problem people have already solved before and you’re trying to improve upon, or it’s a problem that no one’s been able to come up with a solution for and you’re able to invent one. That’s what really intrigues me about engineering.”

Olejniczak was able to pursue his love of engineering as a student in the UMSL/Washington University Joint Undergraduate Engineering Program, in which students complete two years of study at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, taking mathematics, science and general education courses, before transitioning to the Washington University in St. Louis campus to complete the upper-level engineering courses. Last weekend, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a certificate from the Pierre Laclede Honors College.

Having grown up in O’Fallon, Missouri, Olejniczak appreciated the ability to live at home while studying at UMSL, and he was also happy to stay close to his girlfriend, who soon became his wife (earlier this year, the couple welcomed their first child). He was grateful for the scholarship provided through the Honors College, but he particularly enjoyed the college’s discussion-based learning, which felt familiar since he had been homeschooled since grade school.

“There was a back and forth between you and the professor, and it provided a deeper understanding than just surface-level knowledge, like what you might be taught from a textbook,” he said. “That conversation would blossom into something more. In many of my classes, the professors in the Honors College did a great job nurturing those discussions.”

Often, many of those conversations occurred after class, when Olejniczak’s professors in the engineering program would share their own experiences working in the industry at companies such as Ameren or Boeing or offer their takes on developments in the field, like artificial intelligence. In the second half of the program, he enjoyed being able to get hands-on lab experience, learning different tools of the trade, and applying that knowledge to real-world applications through the lens of his professors, many of whom still work in the field.

“A lot of them work during the day at Boeing or at Ameren, so they come and they bring all that experience to class,” he said. “That’s been really prominent in a course that I’ve taken on the power transmission side of things, and how the guys working at Ameren are thinking about how these theoretical ideas are put into play at their job. I think that’s really done a good job preparing me for the practical world of industry instead of an academic career.”

Through the program, Olejniczak was also able to get hands-on experience during internships at Copeland, which provides sustainable heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration solutions, and 3Sigma Automation, which specializes in appliance, electrical and electronics manufacturing. In both internships, he learned more about what goes into building a machine that actually works and solves problems, which he said complements the theoretical skillset acquired through his education in the joint engineering program.

Olejniczak believes that combination of theoretical and practical knowledge is what helped make him an attractive hire at Hitachi Energy, a global technology company focused on sustainable energy. He’s accepted a position working in the company’s transformers division, located in Earth City, Missouri, which both constructs new transformers and repairs and maintains old ones.

Initially, Olejniczak will be part of a team of technicians that operates on transformers – such as the ones used by Ameren and other large power companies – that are experiencing issues. He’ll work closely with a team of technicians based across the country to diagnose and fix problems as they arise.

“As the technicians run into an issue that they don’t know how to fix, or any issue whatsoever, they would contact us and be like, ‘Hey, this is the issue we’re noticing. How do we fix it?’” Olejniczak said. “And then there would be that process where I know what kind of transformer it is, I know the issues that could happen and their effects, and then kind of deducing from that, ‘Oh, this is how you need to fix it.’”

He’s looking forward to learning a broad range of transformers currently in use, from top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art models to ones that have been in use for 30 or 40 years. “There will be a lot of history there,” he said. “I’m excited to learn that history and understand how to fix and solve those long problems and bring in a more modern view and make improvements as I learn.”

In the future, Olejniczak would love to become a subject matter expert in the transformers field, becoming well-versed in all the different types of transformers and maintaining the perfect balance of steel ratio to other active materials, for instance, or understanding all the different impacts and controls, from PID to state-based control.

“I’d like to have enough experience where someone could say, ‘We’ve got this problem,’ and I could come up with a list of possible reasons why this issue is arising, and then be able to give solutions, whether that would be instantaneously, or through the use of stockpiled information that I could go and research and figure out this issue and come back to people with an answer and be trusted that the answer provided can solve the problem,” he said.

Olejniczak is considering pursuing a master’s degree in engineering but is still deciding what he’d like to focus on, which will help determine the subject matter for which he might become an expert. For now, though, he feels the joint engineering program has given him a solid foundation to start his career.

“The program has offered a broad overview of a lot of different subjects,” he said. “It wasn’t very deep into one idea, like electromagnetics, because you could separate any of those ideas out and focus on them for an entire semester, but it gave a very good understanding as a starting point. If there’s any kind of subject idea that comes up in work, I’m almost always able to attach that to something I’ve learned.”