When Maggie Kelly graduated from high school, she was leaning towards interior design,
art or ceramics. Her father, however, tossed in another option.
“My dad suggested chemical engineering because there aren’t a lot of women in this field, the money is good and I’m good at math and problem solving,” she said.
Kelly, who ended up taking her dad’s advice, is an engineer.
“I couldn’t see it at first,” she said. “So when he said chemical engineering might be too hard for me, I decided to show him how wrong he was. The courses I needed to get started were right there in Fort Smith, and I’ve never regretted it.”
Kelly is a Northside High School graduate who said she chose the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith when it was known as Westark because it was convenient.
Kelly attended AV¶¶Ňő from 2000 until 2002 in what was called a pre-engineering program. She then graduated from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2007.
She has been a process engineer for RT Vanderbilt Chemicals LLC since she received her certification and works at its facility in Murray, Ky. The plant runs around the clock, making products that are shipped around the world.
“I know it sounds sort of lame to some people that I lived with my parents the first two years of college,” Kelly said. “But the financial benefits were huge, and they paid off for years. I didn’t have to pay room and board, and I had a two-year half-tuition academic scholarship. My parents helped me with books and I could transition from a strict family structure to the personal responsibility of college. It’s where I grew up.”
There were other benefits, too.
“I learned how to study and how to manage my time at the corner of Waldron and Grand,” Kelly said. “I’m a big believer that practical time management is the key to success.”
She said the campus culture was such that she wasn’t afraid to ask faculty members for help or other students if they wanted to join a study group with her.
“If I didn’t start doing it at AV¶¶Ňő, I never would have had the nerve to do it at a larger school,” she said.
Kelly said she had to work all the way through college and couldn’t have done it and made the grades if she didn’t have a good start at AV¶¶Ňő.
“You can’t get lost in the crowd on that campus,” she said. “People know you and they care about you. So I learned that it was up to me to get my act together. I figured out that I was the one responsible for my future and making it happen. That’s really paid off in the workplace, in my marriage, with my friends and with my family.”
Kelly said the faculty didn’t “baby” her.
“There was a sort of atmosphere that made the shift from high school to college something that I could handle. The class sizes were small, but the content and how the class was taught was all university quality. I was never treated differently than my male counterparts in class, we were all students,” she said. “We were encouraged to ask questions and seek help during office hours.”
Life was different when she transferred, immediately facing an organic chemistry class of about 350 students.
“If I had started out on a huge campus, I would have been overwhelmed both socially and academically,” she said “I don’t think I ever would have graduated.”
Kelly said she always wanted to do something good for the world, the environment, the way people live and where the world is going.
“What better way to help than to work at the front end of it all,” she said. “We can help make safer products, safer ways to work, protect the environment, reduce waste and help people live better. I knew I would enjoy it more than working with landfills and water quality and air pollution as response to something that’s already happened. I wanted to help prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Vanderbilt’s products are additives that improve lubricants, paints, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and rubber products. Vanderbilt operates two plants in Murray. One is a chemicals plant. The other is a minerals plant. She works in both of them.
According to Kelly, manufacturing is characterized by constant changes because scientists improve products and consumers ask for refinements. So the processes change all the time. Chemical engineers such as Kelly make sure that the new procedures and processes are compliant with regulations, maintain product integrity, are safe for workers, are efficient and environmentally sound.
She’s 5’2” tall and weighs 110 pounds and works in what’s traditionally been a man’s world.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “It was intimidating at first, and it’s challenging at times, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I work with very professional people. We’re in a serious business, and we need to do things the right way in everything we do. This isn’t a man’s world. It’s a professional’s world. And it’s a world of teams. I had the opportunity to take a semester overseas and learned about teams in Australia.”
Kelly works with many other people and she works on several teams including a safety committee, a best management practices committee and the emergency response team
“The emergency response team is why I wear a red hat,” she said. ”In case of trouble, emergency responders go into it, while other people are supposed to go away from it. You know, not many women look very cool in a hard hat and safety glasses. But this work has real meaning, and I’ll always be grateful I got to start my education where I could thrive.”
Kelly is married to Jason Mott, also a graduate for Fort Smith’s Northside High School, and is the daughter of Frank and Diane Kelly of Fort Smith and Lin Kelly of Springfield, Ohio.