is senior vice president at Fluor Corporation. He sits on the board of the University Educational Trust and the College of Engineering Industry Action Council at Cal Poly Pomona. He holds bachelor's and graduate degrees from the University of California, Irvine.

Fluor performs projects around the globe for international clients that are household names. We have the capacity to recruit new grads from anywhere in the world.

It then may come as a surprise that Fluor focuses its primary new graduate recruiting on fewer than a dozen schools, only two of which are on the West Coast of the United States. One of these is Cal Poly Pomona.

Our relationship with the College of Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona extends back more than three decades. Why would an international firm such as ours focus on Cal Poly Pomona? The answer is simple: It’s the quality and readiness of Cal Poly Pomona graduates. What we have learned through the years is that all college graduates are not the same. Fluor has hired thousands of Cal Poly Pomona graduates. Those graduates, because of the education they’ve received through the university’s philosophy of learn by doing, are top drawer.

At Fluor, we understand the difference such an education can make. Cal Poly Pomona sets itself apart in the educational community by the graduates it produces. Two things especially come to mind. One is that unlike graduates from most other universities, those from Cal Poly Pomona are ready to work on Day One.

At the university, they are required by the College of Engineering curriculum to prepare senior projects as a team, present them to critical audiences and defend their work. These are real-life skills necessary to succeed in industry. At Fluor, progress is a team sport, so the teamwork approach is crucial to Fluor and the success of our employees. Because of the hands-on training they received at Cal Poly Pomona, graduates rapidly become part of the Fluor project team.

The second is that Cal Poly Pomona graduates have superior technical skills. It is one thing for an engineer to specify a certain type of welding procedure. Most engineers are trained to do so. The polytechnic learning model at the Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering requires graduates to reach a certain level of hands-on welding proficiency. Specifying a weld that you have performed yourself is quite different from specifying a weld you have only read about. Through the polytechnic model, they’ve developed the skill sets to get the job done. They understand theory, but equally important, they know how the theory translates in the real world. They "get it" quicker.

People who know and understand the complexities of business say there is a higher retention rate among employees who assimilate quicker. That’s the way it’s always been with our Cal Poly Pomona graduates.

You can think of Fluor, which has offices throughout the United States and in more than 25 countries, as an architect to industry. Our industry is global, which means that national boundaries and time zones no longer limit how we get our work done. Cal Poly Pomona graduates must realize that their competition is not just UCLA or San Diego State but also rapidly growing technical schools in China, the Philippines, India and elsewhere. The College of Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona recognized this trend some time ago, responding to Fluor’s guidance to help the university’s graduates differentiate themselves.

We have been responsible for major projects from conception to design to construction. Cal Poly Pomona graduates have played a key role in the success of our company. We expect that to continue as we compete not only in the United States but also in the global market as well.