Building a 40-Year Successful Career as a General Electric Mechanical Engineer
Robert Kursmark, E’73, mechanical engineering, credits his four co-ops, including two at General Dynamics Electric Boat and two at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., with helping him build a solid foundation for a four-decade-long successful career at General Electric Aerospace.
Robert Kursmark, E’73, mechanical engineering, arrived at the Northeastern campus in the fall of 1968. A quiet young man from Mystic, Connecticut, he was the first in his family to attend college. He was not sure what to expect, but he was determined to succeed as a mechanical engineering student and was optimistic that the co-op program could jumpstart his career.
And that it did.
During his undergraduate years, Kursmark completed four co-ops, including two at General Dynamics Electric Boat and two at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., a research and consulting firm that is now a part of Raytheon. The co-ops set the stage for his career.
“It’s perfectly clear to me that Northeastern gave me the chance of a lifetime,” Kursmark says.
He spent four decades at General Electric Aerospace, retiring in 2016 as Chief Engineer-Engine Systems, and had previously held a variety of engineering leadership positions in Cincinnati, Ohio and Lynn, Massachusetts. He currently consults for GE Aerospace.
Growing up, he couldn’t have conceived of the positions he has held. He decided he wanted to be a mechanical engineer because he loved tinkering with machinery like lawn mowers and boat motors. A self-described introvert in high school, he had average grades and didn’t participate in extracurricular activities. But he had a drive to succeed.
He recalls earning a “D” on his first exam at Northeastern, which happened to be in physics. That result stunned him at first and then made him study longer and harder. “Coming out of high school, I didn’t have a lot of confidence,” Kursmark says. “But I found the Northeastern environment was open, inspiring, and motivating.”
At the end of his first year, Kursmark began the first of two consecutive co-ops at General Dynamics Electric Boat, which makes submarines for the U.S. Navy. For both assignments, he worked under the direction of the leadership team of the machine shop that machines and assembles mechanical components for the submarines. Kursmark enjoyed the experience and says working with the shop leadership team and the machinists in the shop helped him learn how to interact with co-workers, ask meaningful questions, and learn about the manufacturing aspects of mechanical engineering.
He decided to search for another co-op that would focus more on engineering design and analysis and applied to Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., which was a high-profile research and acoustics consulting firm with close ties to MIT.
He worked in the acoustics department with an assignment conducting noise surveys and predicting environmental noise. He was intrigued enough by the work that upon graduation from Northeastern, he pursued a master’s degree at MIT in mechanical engineering with a thesis in acoustics.
With the master’s degree, he continued his research with a plan to obtain a PhD, but shifted gears and decided it was time to begin a career in industry.
As he applied for jobs, he realized his time as a Northeastern co-op student made him a strong job candidate because he had real-world experiences to share and interviewed in a professional manner. In 1975, Kursmark was hired by GE, where he remained until his retirement in 2016.
Early on, he discovered his co-op days on the shop floor at General Dynamics Electric Boat came in handy. “If you don’t know how a part is made, you don’t know how to design it or to make it producible at low cost and high quality,” Kursmark says.
“Co-op assignments open your eyes,” he adds. “They show you good things and they can show you not-so-good things. I believe that I ended up better—more complete—because of that experience.”
Because of his Northeastern experiences, Kursmark and his wife, Louise, have supported mechanical engineering students with an endowed scholarship. Giving back is important to the couple, particularly to those students who like Kursmark, are the first in their family to attend college, have a financial need, and are willing to work hard to improve their lives.
“Northeastern made a bigger difference to me than I ever could have imagined,” Kursmark says.