Be a student of our business
By Mark Devlin | TLT Volunteer's Voice June 2025
Connecting with other roles in the industry will give you a different perspective and enhance your work.
In this day and age, it is exceedingly rare that one person works for one company their whole career. I must be a unicorn since I just retired in March 2025 after 35 years in the lubricants industry all with one company. In 2024, I was also selected as an STLE Fellow, which is a wonderful affirmation of the success I have had in my career. Part of the secret of my success was being a “student of our business.” Even though my degree is in chemistry, I tried to learn chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, finance and customer relations.
How do you become a “student of our business?” Get out of your day-to-day routine at your place of work and find out what other folks do. If you are an R&D chemist (like I was) talk to the mechanical engineers that run the rig and engine tests that we all use to qualify our products. Ask them, “How is efficiency measured in an engine test?” and “How are gears rated for fatigue damage?” Talk to the business managers at your company and learn what gives them the most anxiety. Is it the supply chain, health and environmental regulations, compressed timeframes for product development or all of the above? This will give you a different internal perspective of your work.
Outside of your company, attend technical conferences and go to seminars that are not related to just your current projects. STLE national and local meetings provide wonderful opportunities to do this. Attending in-person meetings gives you a chance to learn about topics that are in adjacent technical spaces to your expertise. You can also hear the discussions between experts in a setting that is free from distractions. I am a big advocate of virtual meetings and webinars, but quite often when sitting at my desk, other work-related items crept into my consciousness, and I was not giving my full attention to the topic being discussed. It is also good to attend meetings such as SAE International and ASTM International to better appreciate the needs of end-users of our products and how methods we use are developed to address these needs.
Finally, volunteer within STLE (or SAE or ASTM); you can find opportunities at
www.stle.org/volunteer. In my career I was never shy about “raising my hand” and getting involved. At conferences there are always opportunities to chair technical sessions (STLE and SAE) or volunteer to be part of an interlaboratory study (ASTM). During these volunteering opportunities you make new friends and find out that (in my case) chemists throughout the industry face the same challenges. In the spirit of kinship rather than competition you can exchange advice. Sometimes I had too many activities outside my research role, but the “busyness” was exhilarating. Don’t be afraid to get involved. Every new interaction whether inside or outside your company will help you learn something that will make your job and career more valuable to your employer.
Mark Devlin is a retired technical advisor from Afton Chemical in Richmond, Va. You can reach him at ccmtdevlin@gmail.com.