Christ College Scholars are known for extending our community well beyond the boundaries of Mueller Hall and Valparaiso University. From alumni reading groups to reunions at Homecoming, weddings, conferences, and coffee shops, our network of more than 3,000 alumni worldwide share a lasting bond built on exceptional curiosity, conscientious drive, and an informed desire to build a better world for ourselves and each other.
A group of Valpo engineering graduates and Christ College Scholars — Jason Hallman ’06, Megan Austin ’18, and Anthony Cosenza ’24 — share a cross-generational link built not only on their interdisciplinary credentials, but also on their employer: Toyota Motor North America R&D.
Just as unique and varying circumstances led them to their current roles, each found their own path to Valpo. “I was actually going to be a meteorology major for like, a week,” remarked Megan, a Merrillville, Indiana, native who now serves as an interior design engineer for Toyota in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “I knew I wanted to do something technical, so I wanted my education to be very well-rounded. I really thought it was important for me to continue that [Christ College] challenge of reading those ‘harder’ texts … it was important to me to go out into the world and apply not only the technical things I’d learned but [also] more of the worldly: compassion, understanding, humility.”
For Jason and Anthony, Valpo provided just a bit more distance from home, but they found community on campus. Anthony, a powertrain design engineer, recalled the moment he knew he’d found the right university at which to pursue his dream. “[Valpo] has a very personal environment with the smaller class sizes and relationships with professors, which definitely complemented my learning style. I remember the essay to get in [to Christ College] … I wrote about the book ‘Ender’s Game,’ which I was very passionate about at the time. Both my response that I wrote and the letter of acceptance I received made me very confident that Christ College would be a fit for me.”
The desire to get more out of their Valpo education followed them into their STEM courses as well. Beginning before formally completing their honors degrees in mechanical engineering, all three experimented with different roles in and outside of Toyota before settling on what they wanted — and didn’t want — to do. “All three of us actually did co-op rotations,” Jason Hallman, senior research manager at the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC) and Christ College National Council member shared. “We had, maybe from Christ College, a certain curiosity about what it might be like to work in a particular area or a particular company, and we sought answers to that curiosity by actually doing the work.”
Anthony completed a practice interview with Toyota before landing his first internship in production engineering at a facility in Kentucky. Megan’s internship focused on prototype design. After completing the rotation, she messaged general managers at the company to learn more about their available positions and the nature of the roles. Despite her mechanical engineering background, she was able to apply the fundamental skillset she developed at Valpo to a rotation in electronics before landing in plastic components.
Thanks to the deeper understanding of the meaning of their work as cultivated in Christ College (CC), each points to a broader sense of calling beyond designing and testing car parts: the human impact of their work in the automotive industry drives them toward a constant quest to learn more and develop better solutions in transportation. “I also did a similar rotation [as Megan did] working out of my comfort zone in electronics,” remarked Jason. “Because I understood my vocation and my calling to be customer safety, I moved out of crash safety and into our crash avoidance team. It’s a thing that I knew the customers would rely on for helping to keep them safe.”
Jason pointed out that for Anthony and Megan, success in design and development (and all the stops along the way) hinges on the ability to harness those “soft skill” cultivation opportunities that drew them all to CC. “When they say that they’re ‘problem solvers,’ they’re not problem solvers in isolation. To solve a problem at a car company means you have to talk to everybody else whose part might touch your part, or who needs to make space for what you’re doing, or needs to agree to pay an additional cost or change a color or a texture … You need to convince them in a compelling way that what you’re proposing is the best solution for the customer.
“If you want other people to agree that your interpretation or your viewpoint is the strongest one, you need to consider all the other viewpoints in the most charitable way possible. We think as engineers that we are purely logic driven, but the reality is we all kind of bring our own human tendencies, even to a very quantitative career. Engineering is engineering, math is math, but the way people approach problems may be different. You won’t know until you experience a different [viewpoint].”
Megan agreed, adding “It’s so easy to focus on these little silos and individual groups, but you really have to think about everybody; I do think that the Christ College experience really helped me with that. I don’t care if you’re buying a brand new car or you’re buying an older Camry from a used car lot, you’re my customer and I want you to have a positive experience with your Toyota. I care about you getting your kids to school, you getting to work, not breaking down on the side of the road in the winter. I think having that kind of all-encompassing, ‘every customer matters no matter who they are and where they live’ [attitude is] really important for somebody in the design role.”
Anthony emphasized, “I might have gotten all the technical skills I needed from the College of Engineering, but the opportunities and the experiences I got from Christ College really helped improve with both critical thinking and communication, which, in my opinion, have been the most important skills to have developed coming out of college.”
So how did Megan, Jason, and Anthony find themselves doing such meaningful and compelling work at the same organization? They used the same skill that got them through Aristotle, Kant, and the two-week drama lab intensive: persistence.
“After I graduated from Valpo, I reached out to several professors who were actually doing the work I wanted to do and just started sending emails,” said Jason.
“Don’t be afraid to just randomly reach out on LinkedIn or email,” Megan reiterates. “You’d be surprised how many people LOVE to talk about their work, so if you give them the opportunity, they will give you everything that you want to know as long as you ask.”
Finally, Anthony noted that one should “take opportunities as they come and try to learn as much as possible. You don’t always know the direction that your life will head, so it’s important to keep an open mind. That really sets the foundation for your life moving forward.”
Learn more about opportunities to share both your story and expertise with current and future Christ College students by joining us in the Alumni Commons.
