Engineer, Mom, Math Tutor – Service with Math Corps Helped Lorraine Navigate a Career Pause
For Lorraine, service with Math Corps wasn’t an introduction to a new career – rather, it was a welcome pause in a field that she already succeeded in and loved.
Leading up to her stint as a Math Tutor, Lorraine had a long and fulfilling career in engineering. She studied metallurgical engineering and material science at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. After beginning her career in engineering, she had the opportunity to move to the United States, where she became a metallurgical engineer at Cummins Inc. in Columbus, Indiana.
“By my tenth anniversary with Cummins, my husband and I had two small children and realized I couldn’t do everything at once,” Lorraine explains. “So, I stepped away from work, and shortly after that we moved to Minnesota.”
As her children grew older, Lorraine became increasingly involved in their schools – something she deeply enjoyed. “I developed really great relationships with some of the teachers, and one needed help tutoring students in math and science,” Lorraine shares. She stepped up as a volunteer and quickly discovered a knack for explaining sometimes confusing processes in simple terms that students understood.
A Rewarding Year with Math Corps
When Lorraine’s youngest son was a senior in high school, she started to reevaluate her options. “I'd been out of my profession for a long time, and I was starting to think, ‘What am I going to do with myself?’” remembers Lorraine. “And that’s when I learned about Math Corps.”
She quickly became involved, starting as a Math Tutor in 2015 at Forest Hills Elementary School in Eden Prairie. She is happy to reflect on that time, saying, “It's kind of hard to think that those little tykes I was tutoring have probably just graduated high school, hopefully with success!”
Lorraine remembers tutoring a fourth grader who needed a boost. The student was very nervous about tutoring at first, but by the end of the year, showed immense growth. “She was outpacing the normal rate of learning in Math Corps,” Lorraine proudly shares.
Another student was also reluctant about tutoring. However, with time, Lorraine witnessed a significant shift. “He would come trotting down the hallway to me willingly. He knew it was time for tutoring and was ready to do it,” she says. “He even asked me to sign his yearbook, and he wanted a hug before he left for the summer.”
Returning to Engineering Recharged
As the school year came to a close, Lorraine found herself reenergized. “Having been out of the professional workplace for so many years, my time with Math Corps reinforced that I was ready to go back,” Lorraine says. “I enjoyed doing something with a completely different purpose than I had for several years.”
In 2017, Lorraine learned about the Cummins RePower Program – a returnship designed to support returning professionals with a career gap of at least two years. She applied and was offered a position as an engineer for new product development and support at Cummins Power Systems. “So here I am, eight years later,” she reflects. “And I’ve been working back at Cummins in engineering roles ever since.”
Lorraine credits Math Corps with helping smooth the transition back into the workforce – but she also took away a new perspective. “There are times as an engineer when I have to explain things to people who are not engineers,” she shares. “I'm not breaking down things to fractions and decimals level like when I was a tutor, but it does kind of help to think about, ‘Where is my audience at?’ and ‘How do I need to reframe something for them?’”
While tutoring middle school math varies greatly from systems engineering at Cummins, Lorraine sees a common thread in her career journey. “Both Math Corps and Cummins have an emphasis on community involvement and giving back to the communities where we live and work,” she says. “It is one of the reasons why I’m back, and I’ve been with Cummins for almost 20 years now.”
We’re so proud to have been part of Lorraine’s journey from engineering to tutoring – and back again!
Interested in taking a career pause or looking for a fulfilling transition back into the workforce? Become a tutor at a school near you. Visit Join.ReadingandMath.org to learn more.
Cummins Inc. is a generous funder of Math Corps.