ETTL News & Views
Volume 12 • Fall 2004 Newsletter
The second issue of the new electronic version of ETTL's Newsletter … Keeping you up to date on what's happening at ETTL Engineers & Consultants … typical current projects … how we can be of service to you … links to our web site, people … and more!

Doug's Corner

A note from Doug Flatt,
Chairman of the Board of ETTL

Education counts! And we stand
behind our staff's educational
progress in a variety of ways ...

ETTL strongly emphasizes the importance of continuing education for its staff members, encouraging them to keep up to date on the latest developments in their areas of expertise. We encourage them to take refresher courses; to seek higher degrees and/or useful licensing; and to keep themselves familiar with the latest regulations and procedures being set forth by pertinent governmental agencies, attending seminars and conferences the agencies offer to that end. We also encourage them to take advantage of pertinent educational seminars and conferences offered in the yearly agendas of the engineering and technical societies to which they belong.

In keeping with this outlook, we also have had a policy for many years of employing promising young students - high school, junior college, and college students - on a part-time basis to help them grow in capability and help defray their own educational costs. Most have gone on to complete college and then begin their careers, often becoming quite prominent in their chosen fields. A few are briefly described below.

One student, who started working with us while in high school, is now a highly successful architect in Chicago. Another graduate spent time on the staff of Ronald Reagan in the White House, and now has become a federal judge in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Virginia. Another has become a successful physical therapist.

For that matter, a former student named Darrell Flatt, who now is president of ETTL, worked part time for the firm some years back, breaking concrete cylinders on a compression testing unit in an ETTL CMT laboratory!

The young man on the compression tester at right, Mark Humphries, worked part-time for ETTL during the past two years. Mark just took a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Texas in Tyler. He is continuing his studies this fall, working toward a master's degree in that discipline. Click here to read about and see views of a card shuffler-dealer that Mark and two other students developed during a course project, producing a working model ideal for poker players! You'll also learn about the new home of UT-Tyler's engineering school.

Mark's successor at ETTL is a student at Tyler Junior College, Cliff Harris, who currently is taking backgound studies while deciding upon his major.

Our major point with all this is that education counts, proves itself - and supporting it can be helpful in many ways indeed!

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