Alumni Spotlight: Wing-Mei Ko and Vasilios Plangetis

Wing-Mei Ko and Vasilios Plangetis met in 2016 in an Engineering for Sustainability class taught by University of Maryland (UMD) faculty member Natasha Andrade. They eventually became teammates on the UMD Concrete Canoe mix design team, and co-project managers in their senior year.

The Terp couple, who married in 2023, went on to pursue careers in their respective tracks. Ko, a site civil engineer, is an assistant project manager at the Rockville office of the Maryland-based firm Soltesz, while Plangetis, whose focus is geotech, is a project engineer with Schnabel Engineering, also in Rockville.

Ko and Plangetis, now married and working as professional engineers, met during their senior year at UMD. Photo credit: Catrece Ann Mariano.

As experienced professionals, they are sharing tips, advice, and know-how with current UMD civil and environmental engineering (CEE) undergraduates as participants in the CEE department’s mentoring program led by Andrade, who is associate chair for undergraduate programs, the mentorship initiative aims to help ease the transition from academic to professional life.

The mentees in the program tend to be highly motivated, Plangetis said. “Very often, in terms of their preparation for the real world, they’re already 95% there. We try to help them with the other 5%,” he said.

Students often don’t realize that professional engineers are willing to answer questions and provide insights into what they do on a day-to-day basis. “Although it can seem intimidating to reach out to someone at a company or organization, many are willing and even eager to help,” Ko said.

“We hope that through the mentoring program we can help relieve some of the anxiety that students feel by enabling them to know more about what it’s like to actually work in the field, and how work differs from the classroom—because it can be quite different,” she said.

For instance, she said, the workplace often requires collaborating with people from across a wide range of fields, from engineering to computer science to marketing, whereas the student experience tends to be more discipline-specific.

When they think back on their UMD CEE education, Ko and Plangetis remember coursework that was rigorous and rewarding—and extracurriculars that helped them build valuable out-of-classroom skills.

Even as they kept up with their demanding academic workload, the two students found time for a plethora of outside activities, including not only Concrete Canoe but also competitions held by the American Concrete Institute and the Solid Waste Association of North America.

“The experiences that I got through being involved with student organizations provided a lot of great networking opportunities and also taught me to work on a team,” Ko said. “I gained project management experience, technical design experience, and critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.”

“Balancing classes, labs, and extracurriculars can be a challenge, but we always encourage students to seek out these kinds of opportunities,” Plangetis said. “Ultimately they make you a more well-rounded engineer.”

Published December 13, 2024