Posted on Saturday, August 20 2005 - 12:33 AM - Alumni

A flip of a coin brought Phoebe Suina to Dartmouth from New Mexico in 1994. Had the coin landed the other way, she would have attended Stanford. Suina earned a Bachelor of Arts in Engineering in 1998, a Bachelor of Engineering in 1999, and Masters in Engineering Management in 2001. She has no regrets about the results of the coin toss.

She now works at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Project Team Leader for two sub-task groups within the Cerro Grande Rehabilitation Project, with combined budgets of $24 million. She supervises twenty people, along with seven contractors, each with a crew of four to ten people.

The Cerro Grande Project was launched following a massive fire in May of 2000 that burned some 7,000 acres of land on which Los Alamos sits. Most of the money Los Alamos received was traditionally put toward research. They have since realized that the facilities need upkeep as well. Suina's sub-tasks are site-wide fire mitigation and erosion control, both within the Facilities and Waste Operations Division. The fire mitigation group is responsible for thinning the forests. Since much of the land, for security reasons, is fenced, the woods have been difficult to maintain, and have become overgrown and unhealthy. In the current drought conditions, says Suina, Los Alamos is sitting on a tinder box.

Erosion control presents a different set of challenges. Los Alamos is located at the base of a mountain, with a number of critical facilities within the canyon system. A large rainfall could cause significant damage to the laboratory or to communities downstream. However, since the laboratory does not own the water rights, they cannot hold the water past 96 hours. They had to construct a facility, the Pajarito Flood Retention Structure (PFRS), that would protect the facilities downstream, while letting the water out at prescribed rate. Suina was part of the implementation team, and also reviewed and amended the designs where they did not meet specifications.

As a graduate research assistant, for one of her M.E.M. requirements, Suina helped write the emergency action plan for the PFRS, an experience that helped her secure an interview after graduation. When one of the men who interviewed Suina told her that he wanted to establish contracts with the local communities, Suina knew she'd found a match. Thanks in part to Suina's efforts, Los Alamos now has several multi-million dollar contracts with the local pueblos.

Suina credits Thayer School's broad curriculum for preparing her for this job. “We had to learn about materials, electrical, and chemical engineering on some level. I'm having to make decisions in basically all those fields, and to understand and talk that language to my contractors, or people I need to be in compliance with.”

In addition, her Ivy League degree has allowed her a voice at the table with people whom before would not have listened to a young, Native American woman. And she is able to speak for those who still are not heard. Los Alamos is situated on the Pajarito plateau, former home to a number of the local pueblos; the plateau contains many cultural and sacred sites. Suina currently lives with her father at Cochiti pueblo, where she is actively involved in her community. Her mother is from another nearby pueblo, San Felipe. For the past 50 years, because of security reasons, the local pueblos have not had access to the plateau. Suina recalls her grandfather, now 90 years old, singing her songs about the area. She's now able both to listen to local tribal Elders to hear their concerns about the land, and to communicate those concerns to management at Los Alamos.

Between the politics, government requirements, checklists, constant critiquing, and threatened budget cuts it has been, says Suina, a roller coaster. “When I've been in the low times, what's pulled me through is that I'm doing something that I feel is important, something good that has had some benefit not only for the laboratory but for where I've come from. That's been a blessing. Not many people get the chance to return the favor to where you're from. I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity both to be with my family and my community, as well as to apply my engineering education.”

Suina admits that Dartmouth was not an easy place for her but although her fate was determined by the flip of a coin, she has no regrets. “If you can live the best with what you've got, in the end, that's what you were meant to have, and what you were meant to do, and meant to be.”


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