The path to positive change

A career change led transfer student Audrey Coleman to Wright State, where she discovered a passion for electrical engineering and found the support to pursue her dream of improving the nation’s power grid. (Photo by Erin Pence)

Change doesn’t scare Audrey Coleman. She’s learned to go with its flow.

She graduated from Ohio State University in 2016 with dual majors in English and history, did some writing and editing, and then spent years traveling the Ohio Valley specializing in getting new Chipotle locations up and thriving. It paid well. It also, over time, began to feel isolating.

Coleman came home to the Dayton area, reconnecting and working as a bartender. But as a morning person stuck working nights in her early 30s, she knew it was time for a new direction.

“The service industry was bad for my mental and physical health,” Coleman said. “So, I was like, you know what? Time to make a huge life change.”

She enrolled at Sinclair Community College, planning to study biology and eventually become a physician assistant. The content fascinated her, but the work wasn’t a fit. Then her father, a physicist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, shifted her focus with one simple question: had she ever looked into electrical engineering?

She hadn’t. But she was good at math in ways she’d never recognized. No one had pushed her toward STEM before. Now she was drawn to it. Particularly energy systems. And the more she learned about power systems and energy grids in her science-based courses, the more it clicked.

She was sitting in Sinclair’s hallway one day, saw a Wright State University recruiter and thought she would find out exactly what is possible.

Questions answered

“I was like, ‘OK, let’s say I transfer to Wright State. I have so many questions for you,’” Coleman said. “And she answered them all in such a succinct way. She is the reason I’m at Wright State.”

Coleman remembers the recruiter vividly — Rachelle Dancy, assistant director of transfer admission and success in Wright State’s Transfer Center. Dancy answered all her questions, and she also told Coleman about the Wright Path Program and encouraged her to apply.

“Going back to school felt like transitioning into the person I wanted to become.”

Coleman had the GPA to qualify, so she did — about a month before her associate degree was finished. Even signing up that late, the transfer scholarships she qualified for helped cover thousands of dollars in costs, and her connection to Wright Path also opened a door to Tau Sigma, the Transfer Honor Society, which has provided additional opportunities across campus.

“Even if you find out about it a month before the application closes — which is exactly what happened to me — the Wright Path Program is so worth it,” she said.

Unexpected connections

At Wright State, Coleman found something she hadn’t expected: a campus where she felt immediately at home. Because Wright State sits near Wright-Patterson and draws a large nontraditional population, many students in electrical engineering are returning professionals or veterans. She became, by her own classmates’ description, the social glue of her cohort.

“I never felt this connected,” she said. “Every faculty member and employee seems to care about student success. I’ve never experienced that.”

Everything was falling into place. Coleman even had an opportunity to interview for an internship with American Electric Power in Columbus as a real-time reliability transmission intern for the summer. But during her interview, which she joined via video link from a Dunbar Library study room, the automatic lights kept shutting off mid-conversation. The third time it happened, she threw her arms up and let out a mild Rowdy retort.

The hiring committee all laughed, but Coleman worried that the slip had cost her an incredible opportunity.

She didn’t have to worry long. The next morning they gave her a phone call — and the job. Now when she graduates in May, she’ll have added serious hands-on experience with the nation’s largest electric transmission system, and a great icebreaker story about the interview that made it possible.

Coleman’s internship with American Electric Power is a perfect stop on the road to her dream job. She wants to work on large power systems that can help sequester carbon: big infrastructure, big stakes, big math.

“Going back to school felt like transitioning into the person I wanted to become,” Coleman said. “There can be a lot of beauty in that, but you have to find the right motivation.”

Coleman found hers connected to the energy of Wright State.

Related links:
•  « Learn about the Wright Path Program.

  •  « Transfer to Wright State.