Charla Janell (Long) Serbent - Executive Director - WWP - Global Supplier Quality Engineering at Dell

EDUCATION:  Northbrook High School - 1987 University of Texas at Austin, BS Mechanical Engineering University of Texas at Austin, BA in Plan II Liberal Arts Program Wharton, MBA

My favorite college memories are activities with ASME and the Student Engineering Council.  I developed lifelong friends and learned a lot about leadership.  I spent several years working in supporting roles for chemical plants and then transitioned to Sales roles.  I held technical sales and sales manager roles for Nalco Chemical, GE, and PPG.  At PPG, I held several executive roles in sales.  I was promoted to General Manager Asia Pacific and moved to China where I still live today.  I changed jobs to Dell in 2009 and today I lead a global team as Executive Director of Supplier Quality. The SPE-GCS scholarship have an impact because first, receiving scholarships was very important for me to be able to afford college.    Second, my scholarships always motivated me.  I always felt I needed to repay the investment others were making in me by working hard.  I packed my schedule with 18+ hours a semester and never missed class.    I did not know any engineers when I chose engineering as field of study.  But I enjoyed math and physics and others help to point me in this direction.    My advice to current students is twofold:

1. Be hands on - Many classes that I initially thought were not very interesting are very important and interesting to me today:  Materials, Test and Measurement methods, Statistics.  
2. Never stop learning - take classes that interest you even if they aren't required.  Take advantage to open courseware and all the tools available to learn today.