Women In Engineering - Shelyn Slavens, PhD, EI

1. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​With AMA since 2021
2. Position: Civil Process Engineer
3. Disciplines: Water and Wastewater​​​​​​​

Shelyn grew up in NE Oklahoma and went to Oklahoma State for her undergraduate and master's degrees. She attended the University of Tulsa for her PhD. She says the job market "luckily" led her to Allgeier, Martin and Associates. Shelyn recently moved into a new home with her husband and dog.

She thinks it’s interesting working in a primarily male-dominated career field. She says, “I don't think many people expect me. Anytime I’ve told someone I work in engineering they say, ‘Oh, you must be smart then.’”

Shelyn enjoys the design portion of her work and the new experiences she gets from working at AMA. She says the job has helped her become more of a people person. Shelyn likes her trips to the office in Joplin where she gets to talk to more people.

Shelyn’s projects may involve wastewater treatment plant evaluations, wastewater plant capacity, and water system modeling. Interestingly, Shelyn is not from a civil background. Her degrees are in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering. She’s learning a lot about things she didn’t study. In High School FFA they briefly covered basic land surveying, but Shelyn couldn't have anticipated she would work in civil engineering. Shelyn looks forward to the continuing learning curve. She says, “The key is to show you can do what everyone else does.”