Zack Okun, a 19-year-old manufacturing engineering student at Arizona State University (ASU), opened an email a few months ago to find that he won an F. Brian Holmes Directors Scholarship from SME. “That’s awesome,” said his 22-year-old brother, Jake, also a manufacturing engineering student at ASU. Five minutes later, Jake checked his own emails, only to find that he, too, had been awarded the scholarship.
It's not the first time Jake and Zack have found themselves pursuing the same goals.
“From a young age, we both fell in love with robotics,” says Jake. “That’s where our interest in engineering kicked off.”
Zack agrees. “We loved taking things apart and putting them back together. The more complex the problem, the harder we persisted,” he says. “So going into college, we both saw engineering as a career that we wanted to do.”
They both also saw ASU as the university they wanted to attend. “There are so many incredible opportunities, and we have the ability to pursue research and projects that we could not accomplish anywhere else,” says Jake. Not only that, says Zack, “ASU has a great relationship with manufacturing companies that can give us a start to our future.”
The decision to apply for an SME scholarship was an obvious one, as both brothers had been involved with SME for some time due to its status as the professional association related to their career path. “A lot of networking opportunities and events are put on through our university’s SME chapter,” says Zack, who serves as chapter president.
Both brothers excelled academically in high school, and are continuing that tradition at ASU. “We both have over a 4.0 GPA,” says Zack, “and we really enjoy the program. It allows us to have a combination of both theory-based and hands-on projects, giving us an opportunity to learn about the industry and actually work with industry equipment instead of just learning out of textbooks.”
After obtaining bachelor’s degrees, both Jake and Zack would like to obtain master’s — and possibly doctoral — degrees. Following that, Jake would like to pursue an engineering career in manufacturing automation, while Zack would like to get into process engineering. Eventually, both aspire to own or manage their own manufacturing companies.
As Jake puts it, running a company “would be an incredible opportunity to figure out and solve current issues that we have in manufacturing — including labor shortages, inventory challenges, human safety and ergonomics — and to improve manufacturing processes through automation.”
No matter what they end up doing career-wise, the Okun brothers are grateful for their SME scholarships.
“These were not just awards to us; they serve as assurance that we are on the right path,” says Jake, adding that the awards also led to critical connections. Some of those connections took place at SME’s recent International Awards Gala in Pittsburgh, which the brothers attended. “It was great to be able to meet SME leadership and all of the incredible manufacturing engineers making a difference in our world, while forging lifelong connections with industry leaders,” says Jake.
“It was an amazing and inspiring experience to see what our future has in store for us,” adds Zack, referring to the jobs held, research accomplished, and awards won by the manufacturing engineers and professors attending the gala.
Summing up his and Zack’s career goals, Jake says, “We aspire to have a tremendous impact on our world — as the outstanding SME innovators we met have — and to one day give back to the community that has graciously supported our academic endeavors.”