2021-22 AREMA President Michael P. Freeman

摘要

AREMA: Why did you decide to choose a career in railway engineering? FREEMAN: In all honesty, I really had not thought much about being involved in the rail industry when I graduated from Mississippi State (2021 College World Series Champions) in 1982. My career was charted at that time as a military career to repay my Air Force ROTC scholarship debt, but a series of unexpected occurrences led me to begin my career working for a consulting firm that, as it turned out, provided design and field services to several railroads. During the 15 years with that firm, a majority of the projects I worked on involved railroads in one way or another. In 1997,I joined Union Pacific as their director of Structures Design and from that point, naturally, almost everything I do involves railroad engineering. I will say that being involved in transportation infrastructure I am exposed to almost every facet of civil engineering on a daily basis. In a typical day all areas of civil engineering are touched, including environmental, hydraulics, hydrology, geotechnical, and structural. I believe the wide array of exposure to different areas within engineering is why railroad engineering is so appealing to me and would be the primary reason that once I experienced that variety, I continued to head down the path of working in railway engineering.