Tom Morrison
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Tom Morrison takes you through both his academic career in chemical engineering at Cal Poly Pomona as well as his industrial experience after graduating with his Master’s Degree from UC Davis. A well rounded individual, he was able to excel in both academics and sports while working toward his degree, currently balancing his life as a husband, father, employee and church member. While studying at UC Davis, Tom met his future wife who shared his values and love of sports.
The oldest of three children, Tom grew up near Cal Poly Pomona and was encouraged by his parents academically, physically, and spiritually. Always doing well in school, math was his favorite subject and he was fortunate to have teachers who recognized his talent and encouraged him to excel. Learning to appreciate chemistry while in high school, his life was being molded toward a promising career in chemical engineering.
Tom went to work for ARCO after obtaining his master's and has been employed with the company for 16 years. He started out in the process design group in support of two of their west coast refineries and has been involved in nearly every aspect of the refining business – operations, maintenance, optimization, turnaround planning, supply and trading, retail and HS&E. He also had a unique opportunity to travel to China to do some process design work for a refinery in Ningbo, China .
Tom contributes to his profession by teaching the importance of safety to new engineers, participates in an Industry Advisory Council in the Chemical Engineering Department at Cal Poly Pomona, has been awarded two patents, co-authored one published article and was recognized as an ARCO Coach of the Year for mentoring new engineers. Based on his academic and employment experiences, Tom has a great deal of advice for your professionals on how to excel at both, and determine if chemical engineering is the field right for you.
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Profile
Tom Morrison was born and raised in southern California. He was born in Monrovia in 1965 and soon moved to San Dimas where he lived until he graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He then attended graduate school at UC Davis and received a Master’s Degree in chemical engineering. After graduating from UC Davis he was hired by ARCO to work at their Engineering and Technology facility in Anaheim, California. In his 16 years with ARCO/BP, he has worked in process design, operations supervision, technical management, and production planning. He is married with three daughters and currently lives in North Orange County.
Tom, the oldest of three children, was raised in a close-knit family. His father, Gary, worked up to three jobs at a time to support the family while his mother, Sylvia, stayed at home to raise Tom and his younger brother, Tim, and sister, Tina. His parents valued education highly, although neither had ever attended a four-year university. As a stay-at-home mom, Tom's mother was highly involved in all aspects of her children’s development, especially academically. Tom has fond memories of his mom using a flashlight and the globe to demonstrate night and day and the earth’s revolution and rotation. The seeds of science were sown early!
In addition to developing their intellect, the family had plenty of time for fun. They all enjoyed bowling, tennis, bike riding and softball. Tom spent much of his free time around the neighborhood engaged in the sport of the season. Baseball was definitely the favorite sport and he started playing organized ball at about eight years old. His father often coached the sports’ teams and always cheered his children at all of their events. He provided Tom with the example of setting your priorities straight. Work was necessary and should be done to the best of your ability, but family was most important.
Encouraged by the academic support he got at home, Tom always did very well at school with math being his favorite subject. Starting with 6th grade he had outstanding math teachers who recognized his abilities and encouraged him to excel. This continued through high school until he graduated a year ahead of his classmates. Lorraine Matthews was an outstanding math teacher who gave him the individual attention he needed. Another gifted teacher was Don Sanders, who gave Tom an appreciation for the joy of working with chemicals. One event he remembers well involved a beaker of yellow liquid that the teacher said was urine. Mr. Sanders put his finger in the liquid and then into his mouth and instructed the students to pass around the beaker and do the same. The students were all quite intimidated and complied with the request. He then repeated his earlier example asking the students to watch closely. He demonstrated slowly enough so that they could see that his index finger went in the liquid, but his middle finger went into his mouth. Tom learned to observe carefully and acknowledge that appearances can be deceiving.
Tom’s interest in math and chemistry set him on a path that began even before he was born. In her youth, Tom’s mother had two family friends who were chemical engineers. She was so impressed with them, she always hoped to have a child who followed the same career path. Her wish would some day come true.
In addition to math and chemistry, Tom’s main interest in high school was sports. He participated in football, wrestling and baseball. He found that he needed the balance of exercising his body as well as his brain in order to excel at both activities. In his freshman year, he set goals to receive three awards before graduation: Athlete of the Year, Scholar-Athlete of the Year, and Ironman. He also aspired to break the stereotypes of both athletes and brainy people, and as a very well-rounded individual in high school, he did just that. He was able to demonstrate that intellectual people can be great athletes, as well as very outgoing and engaging people. By the end of his senior year, he had achieved all of his goals. In addition, he was named the MVP of the football, wrestling and baseball teams and was the Salutatorian of his high school graduating class with a GPA of 3.96.
Tom enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona because it had a Chemical Engineering department and was less than ten miles from home. In addition, they had a high-power Division II baseball program where he could continue his athletic pursuits. Tom had also applied and was accepted into Claremont McKenna’s engineering program; however, the cost was nearly ten times as great as Cal Poly and Tom didn’t want to generate such a large debt for his parents or himself. Instead, Tom lived at home for the four years at Cal Poly and worked 40-50 hours per week at a machine shop each summer to pay for costs of his education.
Tom’s goals upon starting at Cal Poly Pomona were to receive his degree in four years and to continue playing baseball. He quickly found that few chemical engineers finished in only four years and very few engineers were involved in any inter-collegiate sports. Through creativity and sheer determination, Tom was able to make it work. With the California college baseball season stretching from October thru April, the hardest part was scheduling all his courses around baseball practices while staying on pace to graduate on time. A normal schedule through baseball season included classroom attendance from 8 AM – noon, a quick lunch, practice from 1-5 PM, and then one other class two nights per week. Of course, this type of schedule created a few conflicts over the years and support was needed from both teachers and coaches to make it work. Tom wishes to express his appreciation for the understanding and patience exhibited by the ChE faculty and baseball coaching staff during his Cal Poly Pomona years.
The education Tom received at Cal Poly prepared him well for both graduate school and a career in industry. The ChE department emphasized a good mix of theoretical and practical application which was reflected in the background of the faculty members. Several faculty members, such as Chris Caenepeel and Joe Tassoney, had petroleum industry experience, while others, like Thuan Nguyen, had a purely academic background. This mix of teachers enabled students to delve deeply into the theories of chemical engineering while also stepping back and looking at the real-world applications. A particularly useful series of lessons taught problem-solving and decision-making skills using the Kepner-Tregoe approach that can still be found on the internet today. Communication skills and collaboration were emphasized through the many lab courses where the work was conducted in teams and the results given to the entire class in oral presentations.
While attending Cal Poly, Tom had the opportunity to learn from the most memorable person he had ever met, baseball coach John Scolinos. Coach Scolinos awed and inspired hundreds of young men during his 40 years of coaching. Scolinos was voted Division II Coach of the Century and is a member of four different baseball Halls of Fame. Coach wasn’t on the field to win at baseball, he was there to mold the character of his players and prepare them for life away from the field. This was emphasized with his rules that drinking and swearing were not allowed on his teams, nor would his teams play on Sundays. Some players had issues with these rules, but they were non-negotiable, a testament to Coach’s strength of character and conviction to set a high bar for his players to live up to.
Tom completed his college career in just four years, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. He was voted the Cal Poly Scholar-Athlete of the Year for both his junior and senior years. His performance in the classroom was even more successful as he was named the Valedictorian for the School of Engineering in the 1987 graduating class with a GPA of 3.97. He was also named the President’s Council Scholar for the School of Engineering in his senior year.
Upon graduation, Tom had to decide whether to continue on to graduate school or start earning a salary in industry. The job market for ChE’s was soft in 1987 and he was offered a teaching fellowship at University of California, Davis that would more than cover his expenses. Naturally Tom headed north to graduate school. He later postulated that this was divine intervention since he met his future wife in Davis. His original goal there was to get his masters degree in two years and then evaluate whether to head to industry or continue on to a PhD. He joined a research project with Robert Powell in the field of rheology that would continue investigations into the viscosity of suspensions of rod-like fibers. The experimental apparatus was a slightly higher-tech version of the viscosity experiment many students have done as undergrads where a ball bearing is dropped through a liquid and the viscosity is measured by determining the terminal velocity of the ball. Tom had the exciting task of dropping and measuring the velocity of at least 5000 balls during the progress of this research. As he neared the completion of his master’s degree, he decided to put his degrees to use and start earning a good salary.
He interviewed with several companies in both northern and southern California and the best offer came from ARCO. Not only was it the best financial offer, but it was in southern California where his family was still located. Tom’s initial position at ARCO was in the process design group working in support of ARCO’s two West Coast refineries. This role was a very traditional role in chemical engineering and matched well with his skills developed at Cal Poly Pomona. The beauty of ARCO’s organization was that it encouraged each engineer to take on as much responsibility as they could handle. There was very little hierarchy in the organization and everyone was driven to do the best job they could. The most useful advice Tom received came in the first two performance reviews where he was told to speak up more. Being a quiet person and with little experience, he tended to hold back and not offer ideas. In today’s world, the best solutions come from collaboration with colleagues so active participation is vital.
Tom developed several key skills early in his years with ARCO: communication, leadership, problem-solving, and people skills. These skills were initially developed while working as a process representative for ARCO projects being developed in the Bechtel, CF Braun, and Fluor offices. In this role, it was critical to have a good working relationship with the many engineers working on the different projects. The challenge in most design situations is to balance reliability, flexibility, cost, and safety. The project engineer strives to complete projects in a timely, cost-effective manner while the process engineer must champion the issues of flexibility, safety and profitability. This type of adversarial environment enabled Tom to sharpen these critical skills. Tom further refined his interpersonal skills and problem solving abilities in his second major assignment as an Operations Supervisor at the Carson Cogeneration facility directing five foremen and 28 operators.
As a supervisor, Tom had to motivate workers, handle their personal problems, and balance different personalities. Tom also developed the ability to make decisions with limited background information. Tom had the confidence to display firm leadership in trying situations like these. He also followed through on his decisions, always taking responsibility for the outcome regardless of the result. Tom had a unique opportunity to expand his interpersonal skills by traveling to China to do process design work for the Zhenhai Refinery in Ningbo, China. Having never been out of the country before, it was a challenge to deal with another language, culture and diet! He learned he could take on completely new activities and still perform at high levels. This assignment enabled him to be more of a risk-taker. These years in his career were instrumental in gaining aptitude in communication, influencing problem solving, and harnessing interpersonal skills.
Following his years at Cogen, Tom returned to Process Design and led the front-end engineering design of several projects including FCC and Crude Unit revamps. In 1999, BP bought ARCO and closed down the Engineering and Technology facility. This pushed Tom over to BP’s Carson Refinery to become the Coker unit engineer for two years. His next position as the Lead Production Planner included four of the most enjoyable years of his career. He was involved in nearly all aspects of the refining business: operations, maintenance, optimization, turnaround planning, supply and trading, retail, and HS&E.
Looking back on his career to date, Tom has made significant contributions to his profession and identified the major influences in his life and career. A contribution to his profession that Tom is proud of is imparting the importance of safety, both public and private, to new engineers. He participates in Cal Poly’s Industry Advisory Council to help prepare students for their future careers in the workplace. Tom was recognized as an ARCO Coach of the Year for his work with the newer engineers in the company. He has been awarded two patents and has been co-author of one published article. The major important influence on Tom’s career and life is Jesus Christ. He believes Christ’s principles provide the foundation for relationships with people, strength to maintain personal and corporate ethics, and the ability to influence the world in a positive manner. Other influences are his parents who have always maintained the highest ethical standards in all they have done. His parents taught him that all people are equally valuable and should be treated in that manner.
On a professional level, several people have had a positive influence. Walt Dardenne-Ankringa was Tom’s first boss. He always had a positive attitude and had a passion for coaching and mentoring others to reach their full potential. Bill Dickinson, VP at ARCO, displayed those same traits. These two individuals exemplified the folly in the thought that all business is cut-throat and you must step on others to get ahead. If you stay true to your ideals and morals, you will be rewarded. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 11, “24One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.25 A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”
Tom’s 16 years of employment in the energy industry provide him some perspective into the future of this industry and how chemical engineers will fit into that future. While much is emphasized in the popular press about alternative energy sources, Tom believes petroleum will remain the most cost-effective and convenient means of satisfying global energy demands for much of the 21st Century. As other technologies mature and become more cost-effective, portions of the hydrocarbon economy will be displaced. But the workhorse will remain hydrocarbons. With hydrocarbons as that energy foundation, chemical engineering will be the core discipline required to deliver that energy in a manner that is not detrimental to people or the environment. The argument should not be whether we support hydrocarbons or the environment, but how we convert and deliver the energy of hydrocarbons into a clean environment.
Just after Tom started working with ARCO in 1989, ARCO released the first gasoline reformulated to reduce automobile tail-pipe emissions. ARCO’s work showed that automobile emissions could be reduced significantly if there was an intentional reformulation of traditional gasoline. Since that time, coordination between the oil industry, the auto industry and the regulatory bodies has enabled several step change reductions in automobile emissions due to gasoline reformulation. It is now possible to blend gasoline without added oxygenates and maintain emissions as clean as with oxygenate addition. The role necessary for each of these transitions was the chemical engineer. Our unique ability to understand chemistry and process design enables us to “see” and model the refining changes necessary to complete the transition. Many of the students Tom has interviewed express the view that the refining industry is dead for a chemical engineer. This couldn’t be further from the truth. As China, India , and others advance further into the petroleum age, it will become even more critical to utilize petroleum in a way that negates its environmental impact, but allows people to use this incredible resource.
The world of petroleum exposes an issue that should be of concern to all members of the chemical industry. With our training in and understanding of chemistry and chemical processes, we are in a position to help the people of the world address problems such as increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, oil dependence, adequate food production, and clean water for all people. However, at this point in history, we are not viewed as trustworthy or having credibility to deliver solutions by the general population. Why is this? A primary cause is the twisted use of science to support political agendas. A person with little scientific background turns on the TV to see one scientist claiming that we are in the midst of global warming, the ice caps are melting and life as we know it is over and another scientist saying that none of this is true. This impacts the credibility of science. The answer that is scientifically correct is that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing. Some computer models will extrapolate this effect to show a gradual warming. When this warming prediction is then compared to actual data, there is a correlation in some locations and no correlation in other locations. The key argument here is how that information is then conveyed to the general public. It can be done in a sensational manner, as is too common these days, or in a responsible manner that explains possibilities, but also admits the limitations and complexities of the models. If the latter option would be followed more frequently, the credibility of science would be increased.
This is the world that new chemical engineering graduates are joining. What advice would be useful as you make this transition? First, trust the analytical abilities that you have developed through your college years. While you will be new to a specific position, the intensity and depth of the chemical engineering education prepares you well to contribute to the world. Second, a key to making this contribution is finding a company that will support and help develop your talents. Remember, during your interview process you should be interviewing the interviewer as well as answering his or her questions. Does the company have values and morals with which you agree? Are the employees open and enthusiastic about what they do or do they seem reserved and hesitant to share their knowledge? Your ChE degree is a highly valued commodity and should allow you to pick where you utilize your talents. It is up to you to do so.
For high school students who are choosing a major, chemical engineering is a great choice if you have a love for math and science as well as the desire to work hard to achieve your goals. A review of starting engineering salaries has usually shown chemical engineers to be at or near the top of the list. This is not an accident. The breadth of classes and knowledge required to obtain a ChE degree is daunting and this is the reason for the high starting salary. In addition to salary, a benefit of the ChE degree is that it enables you to enter a wide range of industries and job functions upon graduation. In obtaining the ChE degree, you will learn how to think, analyze, and solve problems in a variety of fields. It is this trait that makes a ChE degree so valuable to an employer. As stated above, be prepared to work hard and be challenged if you choose to pursue the ChE major. Routinely, half of the students who enter into the ChE program as freshmen will switch to an easier major before they are done. Are you up to the challenge?
For those who remember Tom from Cal Poly, it should come as no surprise that he found a wife that was also into sports. Tom met Linda Kennedy while they were both attending UC Davis. They met playing on a co-ed softball team. Linda had played collegiate softball at UC Davis and so shared Tom’s competitive spirit. Upon graduation from UC Davis, Tom brought Linda to southern California to pursue her teaching degree at UC Irvine while Tom began his career with ARCO. The couple started attending Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton in 1989 and were married there in 1990. After teaching for several years, Linda became a stay-at-home mom for their growing family of beautiful girls. As of early 2006, Kelly is 12, Mandy is 9, and Amy is 3. The family continues to be active in their church community. Both Tom and Linda teach Sunday school. The older girls share their time between school and dance. The little one keeps everybody else busy and laughing.
On the occasion of being recognized as the outstanding chemical engineering alumnus at California State Polytechnic University Pomona, Tom has reflected on his life and career so far. He hopes to be remembered as a respected member of the community with the highest of personal morals and professional ethics. It is also Tom’s wish to continue to be a well-rounded, diligent worker, cheerful mentor, and supportive husband and father.