
Alumni Chats: Megan Fox
Last time you filled your water bottle, took a shower or washed the dishes, did you think about the environmental engineers that made it possible? Megan Fox is one such engineer. Megan is an environmental engineer at Baxter & Woodman, working on water and wastewater infrastructure, capital improvement plans, emergency response plans, pipe and pump station design and emerging contaminant solutions. She earned her bachelors and masters degrees in engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
We talked about creativity in engineering, science communication and the future of water infrastructure.
Can you tell us about your job as an environmental engineer at Baxter & Woodman? What does your day to day look like?
I’m a consulting engineer, so people come to me with problems and I’m there to help them solve them. With that, my work is very dynamic, so each day can look very different. To give a broad overview, I spend probably 80% of my time in an office doing design for water main, sanitary sewers, water drinking plants and sometimes pump stations. I also do master planning which involves putting plans together that communities can use to phase out all the projects they have coming up. I look at what projects are needed, looking at budget constraints and things like that. I spend about another 10% of my time doing field work. That could look like construction observation, making sure my project is being built how I planned. Or it could be data collection, like going out to see a pump station that I’m replacing the pumps in. The other 10% of my time is spent meeting with clients.
Environmental engineering can cover a lot of different areas and specializations, and you’ve worked primarily in water. What drew you to that branch of environmental engineering?
I was always drawn to water and the environment. I loved being outside and cared very deeply for our natural resources, but I didn’t actually know how to get into that field. It wasn’t a super clear-cut path. Luckily, I have an uncle who’s a civil engineer and he was very familiar with the field, because a lot of the time civil and environmental engineering programs are paired together. He’s actually the one who encouraged me to go the environmental engineering route. It really worked out where I had this passion and then I also had somebody who knew the route for me to get into that field.
How did your academic career lead you here?
I didn’t really know that I wanted to pursue engineering until I was applying for college, and I didn’t really have a grasp on what engineering even was. I enjoyed math and science, but I fully thought I was going to go into environmental science. I looked into the differences between environmental scientists and engineers, and basically learned that environmental scientists collect and gather data and can tell you what the problem is, while an engineer will work to solve the problem. I really liked that aspect of coming to that final solution to problems, so I leaned more towards engineering.
I think it’s common for many Americans to take resources and infrastructure for granted, without thinking about the work that goes into maintaining them. What do you wish more people understood about the water they use?
Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head. People don’t really hear about what’s going on with their water until something goes wrong, so they tend to have a very negative view of their community water system. I would want people to know that the people who are working on these water systems are your friends and neighbors. They’re drinking the same water that is coming out of your pipe, so they care just as much about the quality of that water. If you ever have any questions or are concerned, feel free to reach out to your community’s water system. Most of the time, we’re really happy to talk about it with somebody. It also helps us know what our communities care about. Sometimes it can point to a problem that we didn’t know about, and that helps us solve it faster.
How has water infrastructure changed and what do you think the future of water infrastructure looks like or could look like?
I’ve only been in the industry for five years, but I’ve already seen some of that change, and a lot of it is usually driven by what regulations are coming out. A big one that’s really changed what the industry looks like just in the short time I’ve been here is the lead and copper rule revisions. We are really focusing on getting the lead pipes out of our water systems. So, that’s really changed how we prioritize which projects we’re going to focus on, and it’s very much changed the budget side of things and how we allocate resources. I think looking into the future, we’re going to require a lot of innovation, because where we are right now, we don’t have all the resources we need to tackle a lot of the problems that are coming down the pipeline. Some people are afraid of things like automation and artificial intelligence, but I think we’re going to need to embrace that just to have the bandwidth to solve these problems that are coming our way.
I’d love to hear about the Crystal Lake Cardboard Regatta that you participated in last year.
This is an event that’s put on by the park district in our community, so anybody can join, but Baxter & Woodman likes to sponsor a lot of events in the community, so the company sponsored one of the boats and that was how I got involved. There are different categories for the boats: there’s a canoe style category with one to two people—that’s what we did—or you can also go for larger boats that are barges, with three or more people on them. Those are usually slower, but people get very creative with those. For example, there was one that was tiki themed, or there was one that looked like Gary, the snail from Spongebob.
I didn’t actually participate in building our boat—it was built before I had started at the company, and it just so happened we still had that boat and I was able to pull it out of storage. But that is one fun aspect of it. They’re made out of cardboard entirely, and you usually use shellac or some kind of paint to help waterproof them before putting them in the water and racing them. The five fastest boats made it to the finals and we ended up winning, so that was a lot of fun.
That’s awesome. I think that’s such a cool example of STEM being fun, even when it’s hard.
Yes! And a fun story: my husband participated in the same race when he was growing up, because he was involved in organizations like Science Olympiad. He was so excited that I was participating in it.

I think people often separate math and logic from creativity and art, but engineering heavily involves both. How do you use your math skills and your creativity in your field?
I love this question because I do feel like I get to be very creative, but a lot of people don’t see that, and I think having strong math skills lets you be more creative. For example, when I’m designing a water treatment plant, I have to figure out how the equipment is going to fit in a room. Routing all this pipe takes a lot of geometry and understanding of angles and how things are going to fit through the door.
Another area I didn’t really expect to be involved in engineering is communications. When I’m putting a report together, I have to think about how the report looks and figure out how I’m going to be able to communicate best with my audience. I’ve really gotten to be creative in that way. We’ve actually hired graphic designers who help me with putting together those charts and graphs and figuring out what’s going to be most palatable to the audience. Luckily, they are experts at what they do, and they can take my crazy ideas and turn them into something that is pleasing to look at and understandable. That’s been really something I’ve enjoyed is getting to use that creative side to come up with different ways to communicate my ideas.
What do you find most rewarding about your career?
I think a lot of people who go into engineering really like the idea of being able to help people, and that’s definitely one of the most rewarding aspects. When I’ve completed a project, sometimes I have the opportunity to go out and see the project after it’s been built, or I get to see a project I recommended years ago actually get built, and I know that project is improving water quality in the area. That’s really satisfying to know, even though they may not have really noticed anything. I know that the project is helping them.
On the flip side, what do you find most challenging about your career?
A lot of the projects that these communities are coming to me with, they’re bringing them to me because they’re not easy. They don’t have the time or resources to solve them themselves. So oftentimes, the projects themselves are the challenging part. We do have a running joke that anytime at the beginning of a project, if somebody says it’s easy, there’s going to be some kind of curveball. But I also think that while that’s a challenge, it is also one of the things I enjoy the most because I think I would get bored otherwise.
Thinking back to your time in MATHCOUNTS, do you have any favorite memories?
I enjoyed the studying and problem solving that came with MATHCOUNTS. My dad was helping me study, and he has a math degree so he had pulled out one of his old textbooks. One of the problems in the textbook was about a snail climbing up the side of a well. He would climb up 5 inches during the day, but fall back 2 inches overnight. It was kind of a tricky question because you have to realize that the snail is going to actually reach the well before it falls down that night. So I studied that, and then that same type of question appeared on the competition. It was just so rewarding to know that the work I put in actually did help prepare me for the competition.
Are there any skills or lessons that you learned in MATHCOUNTS that are still useful to you today?
I think the big one is being able to read a problem because a lot of the questions in MATHCOUNTS are word problems, so they’re not always directly obvious. Also, thinking critically about how you would solve a problem in a real world setting. That’s pretty much what I do every day, is look at these real world problems people are having and thinking, “Okay, what math can I use to solve this?” And it usually ends up being more than just one equation. It’s a lot of them. But it takes a lot of critical thinking that MATHCOUNTS helped build when I was young.
If a middle-school student is interested in engineering but not sure where to start, what might you recommend?
Middle schoolers these days are so lucky because there are so many STEM programs nowadays. I would recommend looking at those. And if you don’t know where to find them, I know a lot of universities have STEM outreach programs. You could probably find some through MATHCOUNTS or your peers at MATHCOUNTS even.
Starting young is great because you have a lot of time to find both what you don’t like and what you do like. Sometimes it’s more important to find the things you don’t like. So, it’s okay to try something and realize you don’t like it.
What advice do you have for Mathletes in general?
It’s probably going to sound crazy now because Mathletes are very often high achievers, but if you keep pursuing math at higher and higher levels, there will probably be a time when it’s going to stop making sense, and that is perfectly okay and normal. Don’t let that discourage you. Keep pushing through it, and that will help you learn how to truly study and problem solve. Also, never be afraid to use your resources. It doesn’t make you any less smart to ask for help.
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