Friday Feature: Former Student Ben Schafer

 

With the start of the school year, I haven’t been too diligent about posting these every Friday.  Okay, I may have slacked a bit this summer, too.  But we’re kicking it back into gear, featuring former students with interesting stories, endeavors, and advice.  Meet Ben Schafer, who attended Rochester Institute of Technology and is now Customer Quality Engineer at BorgWarner.

Ben Schafer

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At RIT I definitely filled up my time. While maintaining full-time student status, I became a New York State EMT. I volunteered a minimum of 20 hours a week for RIT Ambulance and held several positions on both the Executive Board and the Operations Staff. I also took part in RIT’s relatively new SAE Clean Snowmobile team. Make sure you find time to enjoy college, and don’t think of it as miserable school. You are an adult in college and you make of it what you want. You decide how your college life is going to be.
While at RIT in my 3rd year my father was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. As I am sure many people have seen, the Ice Bucket Challenge is something that means a lot to me because this is a disease that affects less than 0.01% of the population in the United States and not too many people are familiar with it. I understand that people struggle through life and I sure did as well. I did everything I could with the hopes of having my father watch his fourth and final child walk across the stage at graduation. However, in the middle of my fifth and final year, on New Years Eve, 2013, my father passed away.  Six days later I was taking an intercession class, and I took seven classes that Spring semester on top of my work with RIT Ambulance. I was also nominated as the 2014 Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineer Technology Graduation Department Delegate.

I began my adult career in a quality engineering co-op at BorgWarner in Ithaca, NY starting at the end of 2012. In the 9 months I was there I led several large projects and was given a formal letter of recognition by the management staff for my support and level of detail on a recurring issue that I was able to finally get resolved. I am now a full time engineer at BorgWarner in Ithaca, NY. I am the only Customer Quality Engineer (CQE) that works in the plant, so as you can imagine I have some very long days. I love my job, though, so I do not consider it work. I consider it fun.

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In the near future I have plans to get a Masters of Science in Applied Statistics, my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and a Master of Business Administration. I am living proof that no matter what road blocks may get in your way, there is ALWAYS a light at the end of the tunnel.

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein