World Engineering Day 2022: BART fosters new generation of young, diverse UC Merced student engineers
BART engineer Derry Moten leads the UC Merced Capstone Design program for BART
On a sunny weekday in February, a group of UC Merced students trekked to the Bay Area to study pigeons. Huddled around the concourses at Richmond and El Cerrito del Norte stations, the students craned their necks at the ceilings to see and note how pigeons have made homes at the stations.
The students are not bird-watchers. They are engineering students in their senior year and participating in BART’s long-standing Capstone Design program. The program, which began in 2017, allows UC Merced engineering students to gather real-world experiences.
At the end of the semester, students make a presentation at the class’s final competition, offering BART a practical engineering solution to the problem they were tasked with. Four groups who worked with BART have won the competition thus far. A total of at least 160 students have worked with BART since the program’s founding.
BART has remained committed to fostering a welcoming, encouraging environment for young engineers – especially women and people of color who have been underrepresented across many engineering fields – by promoting student programs like the Capstone Design program. Other programs have partnerships with other university programs; the Computer Systems Engineering department has been collaborating with UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco computer science students as well.
Derry Moten, a BART engineer, has taken up the mantles as the head of the UC Merced Capstone Design program for BART. Moten, who joined BART in 2019, works with UC Merced Assistant Professor Dr. Alejandro Gutierrez, who helped found and currently manages and mentors the class.
“When I was in school with my own senior project in university, I realized then how helpful it was to make distinction of what I learned in school and how that is applied in the real world,” said Moten. “Having been in school recently, I was able to better help bridge that gap for the students.”
Every semester, different groups of student engineers are formed to tackle an engineering issue present at BART. The students in the program are seniors, and major in a variety of engineering fields, including electrical engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science and more.
The 2022 UC Merced team, from left to right: David Mendoza Bautista, Nelson Cha, Karla Ayala Avalos, Alexander Lau, Misaki Cramer
Most of the projects are hidden from plain view but are important to ensuring BART’s reliability, such as ways to keep the third rail insulators clear from debris or monitoring battery health at substations which feed power to trains. This semester, the team has been tasked with finding humane, practical solutions in keeping pigeons and birds out of the above ground stations in Richmond and El Cerrito.
Moten said his personal favorite project he has seen from students were an attempt to capture renewable energy from the wind trains create when they accelerate at a station or a tunnel.
As the newest University of California, UC Merced is one of the most diverse universities in the state. It also records a relatively high percentage of students being the first generation in their family to attend university. Amelia Smithson, Manager of Special Projects for BART’s Maintenance and Engineering department, touted UC Merced School of Engineering’s student body diversity especially among women and Hispanic students when compared to national STEM workforce percentages. For example, 49% of UC Merced School of Engineering students identify as Hispanic, sevenfold of that in the national STEM workforce.
“We work closely with the UC Merced Engineering students to develop real life solutions in bringing innovation, creativity and a new perspective to an existing concern,” said Amelia Smithson, Manager of Special Projects for BART’s Maintenance and Engineering department. “It is important for our team to encourage and support the next generation of Engineers to excite and motivate them about public service and the importance of public transportation.”
As an African American engineer, Moten emphasized the program’s goal of providing students a real-world opportunity to learn what it takes to be an engineer making a difference in the public sector. Moten says some students engineers benefit from learning that engineering after college means learning to be flexible in thought and collaborative in action.
After their experience with the Capstone Design Program, many UC Merced students apply for BART internships or full-time positions as junior engineers to continue their connection to BART. Several UC Merced students who participated in the Capstone Design program has worked as BART interns.
“We try our best to work with these students as our colleagues,” said Moten. “We want them to have them see a different side of us, not as supervisors but as coworkers. We always tell them, ‘hey none of these deliverables are solely for us. We want to help you to do your best.’”
Join BART engineering to make your impact!
BART is looking for talented engineers who want to help solve complex challenges and help move the Bay Area.
To apply, please visit bart.gov/jobs and check out our Online Job Application Portal for future employees and current employees. You can search for job listings based on the four-digit ID number next to the job title in the portal.
Current full-time engineering positions we have open, as of March 4, 2022:
- Engineer (Electrical) - 9112
- Engineer (Mechanical) - 9111
- Manager of System Integration (Core Capacity Project Delivery) - 9007
- Senior Vehicle Systems Engineer CBTC - 9033
BART's Civil/Structure/Construction Engineering Department is also looking for summer interns (ID: 9162). Application deadline, as of now, is March 18, 2022 (or upon receipt of 200 applications, whichever comes first).
This summer internship program is scheduled to run for eight (8) weeks beginning on June 20, 2022 and ending on August 12, 2022. All candidates selected must be able to attend the entire program. This position is located in Oakland, CA and does not have a remote work option.