When Sammi Eason started at the College of Engineering four and a half years ago, she knew she wanted to find a career path that combined industrial and systems engineering, her major, with theater, her minor.
Upon graduating this December, Eason will get her wish. She will be starting a full-time job at Walt Disney World in Orlando as an industrial engineer. Disney’s industrial engineering department is responsible for providing a wide variety of strategic and analytical support across the properties.
“Part of the reason that I chose engineering in the first place was because I wanted to work somewhere where I could blend the theater and the arts with science and math,” said Eason. “So Disney was kind of always on that list. That would be a really cool way to blend storytelling and science.”
Disney wasn’t always a linear path for Eason, who got rejected two or three times before landing her first internship with them at the end of her junior year.
“One of the really big reasons I ended up being able to break into that industry a little bit was due to one of the one of our NC State alumni, who actually came back to work on Academic Affairs staff,” Eason said. “She had had the internship in the department a few years ago and she let me come to her office and talk to her about it for like, four or five hours. She was very kind and did a mock interview with me and all sorts of different stuff.”
The past few years have been a whirlwind for Eason. Before officially deciding on Disney, she worked at the NASA Glenn Research Center after her sophomore year and worked for a time at Pentair in Sanford, NC.
“I realized that I’m not a research person,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not my bread and butter. It’s definitely someone else’s.”
In addition to juggling various jobs and classes, Eason has also been in the Engineering Ambassadors program since her freshman year, doing recruiting events for the university and events for the first-year engineering students. She was a teaching assistant for various engineering introduction classes a total of six times.
“And then I’ve also been a part of the engineering honor societies Alpha Pi Mu and Tau Beta Pi,” she said. “I’m a member of the on campus ministry, Cru, and I’ve also done some work with university theater here and there, kind of like a supplement to the minor.”
Between all that, plus a major and a minor on different campuses, Eason said the buses were certainly her friend.
“There was one semester where one of the classes I had to take to stay on track from a theater minor was 15 minutes before one of my required classes to stay on track for my ISE degree,” she remembered with a laugh. “I talked to my professors and was honest about the situation and what was going on. Luckily, everybody in both departments was really accommodating. I showed up late to class pretty much every day.”
Eason credits NC State with her successes, both on and off campus.
“I got the job at NASA through another alumni from the NC State alumni network and also having a professor write me a letter of recommendation,” she said. “So those are two ways that NC State helped me out right there. The job at Pentair I got through the Career Development Center and also the career fair in general.
“And my dream job at Disney,” she continued. “The only reason I was able to break into that is because of one of the members of Academic Affairs. She was absolutely incredible and kind of held my hand and guided me through that. People genuinely cared, like my professors and the adults, but I surrounded myself genuinely cared about listening to why I wanted to do it and tried to help me as best as possible to get there.”
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