NPRE Family: Fanning sisters both find futures in nuclear power

For Alexandra and Erin Fanning, choosing NPRE at Illinois was a no-brainer. The two sisters chat here about the experiences, motivations, and opportunities they found in their major. 

Why did you choose the University of Illinois?
Alex: I chose to come to this university because I felt that it offered me all of the opportunities I was looking for. Before deciding to come here I was able to attend an admitted student lunch with Women in Engineering and that was what sealed the deal for me. Knowing that I would automatically have so many wonderful resources (like WiE) the second I stepped foot on campus was very reassuring.
Erin: I chose to come to Illinois because I already knew I wanted to go to a big school because of all the opportunities it allows you; I also knew I wanted to do Nuclear and there are not many schools that offer the major to begin with. I also wanted to be able to easily get home for the holidays or for the weekend and because Illinois was the closest it was already on my radar. What sealed the deal was probably the fact that they offered me a scholarship and Alex was already here so if I ever needed anything, I knew I would have someone close by.

In what research or internship opportunities have you participated? Can you tell me about them?
Alex: So, I spent the last two summers interning with Exelon. The first summer was at their corporate office, and last summer I was at Dresden generating station in Morris, Illinois. I enjoyed both of those two experiences. When I was at corporate, I got a chance to dip my toes into the electrical engineering world. We were refueling outages at the reactor and making interactive procedure documentation. When I was at the plant, it was much more hands-on. I was writing up reports for fuel moves, observing overnight shifts when they were doing end of cycle rod pulls, and working on modifying documents.
Erin: When I was [working in a summer job at Argonne National Lab], I was managing some of their documentation for their SAS [Safety Analysis System] code. They have a user’s manual which wasn’t well formatted, so I wrote some code and fixed some of the formatting. After that, I wrote a bunch of test cases for the SAS code to find bugs in the code.

I know you mentioned that your father is a Nuclear engineer. What role did your family play in your decisions on what to study?
Erin: He always says that he never specifically encouraged us to pursue Nuclear Engineering, which is true, but I feel like we were always hearing about some things, so we found it interesting and it was familiar to us. So, when asked what kind of engineering I wanted to do, I already knew that nuclear was something that I was interested in.
Alex: My dad never specifically encouraged us to do engineering, but he did encourage us to pursue interests we had in engineering, math and science. Just hearing about what he did as a kid, it’s like you don’t know what it means, but it sounds really cool. So that really sparked an interest in engineering in general, and it’s something I always thought was cool, because of him. I really looked up to him.
Erin: It’s the opposite with our Mom, because she is a pharmacist and she tells us, “don’t go into pharmacy, it’s the worst thing you can do.”
Alex: It’s just a really stressful job being a pharmacist. You’re responsible for giving the right medication to people, and if you mess up, there are serious consequences. There's also a lot of other demands of the job.
Erin: On one side, it was “don’t do this,” and on the other it was, “just do what you want.”

Tell me more about your sibling dynamic. Are you two competitive with each other?
Alex: In some aspect, yes, but in school, no. It helps that we are in different years, so we don’t take the same classes. Well, sometimes we do. It’s more of a, I help her with her homework a lot. (laughs)
Erin: I make sure she does her homework a lot. (laughs)
Alex: No…. That’s not…  We are competitive in a social sense rather than academic sense – like how we are arguing over who helps who more. We have some competition, but not in academics. In general, our interests are very different. Outside of class, we are very different people. Just like any other siblings, I like being better at things, and she likes being better at other things.

So why NPRE?
Alex: I knew I wanted to do engineering, but I didn’t know exactly what kind, so I wanted to explore and see what there was. For me it was that, after exploring all those different types of engineering, it was just the one I was most interested in learning about. I was the most passionate about it, and I just loved learning about issues involving nuclear power in the world
Erin: It’s a very friendly major. There’s always someone you can go to and ask a question, and there’s always students to study with. It’s a big university, so you have access to all the opportunities of a big university, and all of the resources of a smaller major.