CSU Alumna Participates in Polaris Leadership Program
Hundreds of miles from friends and family, Colorado State Alumna Shannon Lynch is pioneering her way into the snowmobile industry in rapid time. The first Colorado State graduate to be recruited by Polaris Industries, she was chosen for their challenging Engineering Development Program. Renowned for their snowmobiles, the Minnesota-based company also engineers and manufactures all-terrain vehicles (ATV), utility vehicles and Victory motorcycles.
While a student at CSU, Lynch, an avid snowboarder and outdoors enthusiast, chose the clean snowmobile challenge as her senior mechanical engineering design project. Learning the mechanics of retrofitting a two-stroke engine to operate cleaner and more quietly proved to be a life-changing assignment.
While competing in Michigan with her senior design team, Lynch was offered a competitive position with Polaris. As part of the two-year development program, Lynch rotated through four divisions of the industry from power train and design, to marketing and manufacturing.
Since 2004, Lynch has had the opportunity to create and hone her leadership and communication skills and technical engineering abilities. As part of the program, she served as manufacturing supervisor of a welding line and design engineer for a Victory motorcycle project. She has traveled to Germany to work with industry vendors, and even coordinated a new sponsorship with RIDE Snowboards and TGR.
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Polaris is committed to improving environmental performance, and Lynch has built on the principles she learned while at CSU to produce lower cost and more fuel-efficient machines. Since completing the challenging leadership program, Lynch now serves as a test engineer supporting all of the products Polaris makes.
Active in engineering while at CSU, Lynch attributes her career success to work at the Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL), headed by Dr. Bryan Willson, interim director of Colorado State's new Clean Energy Supercluster. From painting pipes and laying conduit to coordinating the installation of the largest engine in the laboratory's history (110,000 lbs.), Lynch gained practical experience at the EECL that has proved to be invaluable.
"The best part of working in the engines lab was that I got hands-on experience, which was the key factor to getting the job at Polaris industries," said Lynch. "I got a lot of experience wrenching on engines, working with equipment, and meeting people in other industries."
As is obvious in her own enthusiasm for the company, Lynch says that Polaris employees put heart and soul into their work, and have a true sense of pride for the company.
"You just can't help but get excited," said Lynch. "You can go to a dealership or see people riding on the road and say, 'I helped design that! That's my company! I work for them!'."
To view Shannon's video please visit http://www.engr.colostate.edu/comm/media/videos/infopage.cfm?id=147