By Michael Tackitt
Air Force Sustainment Center
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- When you work in a building that covers 2.5 million square feet of real estate with thousands of other employees every day it might sound unimaginable to be able to do anything that would get noticed, but that is exactly what Edgar Magallanes did.
Magallanes, who works as an electronics engineer for the 558th Software Engineering Squadron at Tinker Air Force Base, is a 2024 recipient of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers’ (SHPE) Technical Achievement and Recognition (STAR) Award for Managerial Excellence (Government). According to SHPE, the award is intended to celebrate outstanding professionals, companies, and government agencies for their efforts to advancing Hispanics in STEM careers.
Darla J. Lynn, a first-level supervisor for the 558 SWES, nominated Magallanes for the work he did for bringing new talent into the organization.
“When he came to A Flight, he was put into my section, much to my delight, and so shortly thereafter had been considering and trying to work at a program for onboarding new engineers,” she said. “We asked him if he would take a leadership position in that process, and he went with it and just knocked it out of the park in that regard.”
Magallanes, who specializes in mission computing, used his technical knowledge to simplify the process of bringing in new hires, which has proven in the past to be a challenging process at times.
“We’ve had a lot of new engineers start lately, and he’s been responsible for seeing that they’ve been brought on well, that their morale is high, and they are integrated into our teams,” Lynn explained further.
Magallanes was born in El Paso, Texas, but spent most of his childhood on the other side of the border in Ciudad Juarez. His American roots were formed several years prior, thanks to his grandfather, who came to the U.S. to work in a special work program.
“He migrated from central Mexico through the Bracero Program, a program where the United States was essentially requesting labor from Mexico’s government, and so my grandfather was part of that group for some time,” Magallanes explained.
The Bracero Program was intended to address agricultural labor shortfalls caused by World War II and lasted from 1942 until 1967. And even though his grandfather gradually made his way back to Mexico after the program came to an end, he did not completely close the door on working in the U.S.
“He did purchase a property on Ciudad Juarez, which on the Mexican side, but [in] the bordering town of El Paso he would conduct business back and forth. He ended up working demolition at the time, and his former employer actually helped him establish residency in El Paso.”
Magallanes was born in the United States, but because of his parents being Mexican, he had the advantage of dual citizenship. While he spent most of time living in Mexico, he could stay with his grandparents, already naturalized citizens, from time to time.
Magallanes pointed out that one of the unique aspects of living in that area was the rich Hispanic culture present on both sides of the border.
“You know, the family, the culture, everything is there,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on the U.S. side or the Mexican side, it’s the same people. You’re seeing the same language and everything.”
Magallanes received much of his early education in Mexico, and it was through opportunities there that he developed his interest in engineering. In middle school he was selected for a vocational workshop, which was in an electronics lab.
“It’s just by lottery, you don’t pick. They just assign you and that was my first year of middle school,” he said. “It was geared toward repairing electronic components and systems.”
Ironically, if you were to place the students in his school into categories of who liked and disliked the electronics lab, Magallanes would be the only one in the “like” category.
“You could negotiate with other students that didn’t like their lab, and nobody wanted to go the electronics lab. Everybody wanted out of it, so I just stuck with it,” he said. It was kind of a love-hate relationship by the beginning of my second year. I didn’t know what it entailed, but I told myself I was going to become an electronics engineer, and I just took it and ran with it.”
Magallanes appreciated the open sense of community that came with the Mexican school system shared by everyone involved.
“If there was a student that was struggling, all of the students were trying to help,” he said, as he pointed out the close relationship between the parents and the teachers. “So, the moment you start slipping, your parents knew about it, and it was a collaboration between parents and teachers … and on top of that they were also pretty good at setting the bar kind of high.”
After high school in the U.S., Magallanes attended the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP), where he earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering with a computer and electronic devices concentration, and he is currently pursuing a Master of Science in electrical and computer engineering with a radar and radio frequencies concentration.
Once he graduated from UTEP, he started his affiliation with the Air Force Civilian Service through the PALACE Acquire (PAQ) program, which is a paid, full-time, two to three-year training program for college graduates who are interested in career fields in science and engineering, financial management, cyber/IT, civil engineering, and intelligence, and others. Enrollees who successfully complete the training plan will receive an offer for a permanent AFSC position. Magallanes was attending the University of Oklahoma when a family medical crisis occurred, and he experienced a stunning setback.
“I met all of my coursework credits. Everything was where it needed to be, but my research was lacking. So, I did try to defend the thesis, but it was not where it needed to be,” he explained. “And it was around COVID time, so it was chaos.”
“It was shocking to me,” he continued. “Because I went through the whole thing and I thought I was going to get it done and during that time my mom had a stroke, and I was pretty much in denial the whole time. Magallanes completed his bachelor’s, but not his master’s degree. “I still have that personal goal to go back and retry it.”
Magallanes is still pursuing the goal of a completed master’s, but this time he feels like his experience with the 558th has put him in a better position to succeed, and he’s learned to be more patient along the way and not so hard on himself.
“So that is my current challenge right now. What I overcame was that failure, if you would, to be able to see it didn’t go like you planned it, but you got your family, you got your work, your co-workers, your friends, and you know, it just wasn’t the time for you,” he said. “I’m at the point where my youngest right now is three years old, and I’ve changed my focus a little bit – but I am definitely going to retry and if it takes more than one try, I’ll go back and put my name on that thesis and get it published.”
Despite Magallanes’ accomplishments and future goals, he acknowledges that without the help he has had along the way, his life may have been a completely different story.
“Before I came here, working full time, going to college without government aid, without people there to support you, it’s never going to happen,” he explained. “You could have all the right ideas, you could have all the drive, but then again you live in the real world. Things cost money, mouths have to be fed. All of these things are things we sometimes take for granted.”
Magallanes’ drive to continue to improve himself has led to his efforts to improve the experiences of those around him, which has had a profound impact on his work center, improving the readiness of newly hired employees.
“The way we develop software, we do it on teams, and our new employees come, and they serve for a brief period as their own little team, and he is the leader,” Lynn said. “Right now, for instance, he’s the leader of four teams, because we’ve had so many people start this summer. So, there’s teams of four or five that he’s leading and keeping track of and tracking with each of those teams where they’re at in the process and where they need to go in order to be ready to be placed on our other software teams.”
It is this level of attention and care for his teams that lead to his nomination for the STAR award. An honor that even Magallanes admits he did not think he would achieve.
“Usually, when I apply for competitions or raffles, I usually never win,” he chuckled.
However, he also admits that the award recognizes efforts that even he at times had a hard time picturing the end results of.
“You know when you build something and you start putting it together at the beginning, it doesn’t have shape or form, but when you start building it together, and then it takes shape? It kind of feels like that,” he said. “And I can compare it to becoming an acting supervisor. So that is the goal that I have for myself, [just] not in the near future, so I was building myself up for that. But you know, life has a way to it, and so that time is now.”
Magallanes has just been named as the acting supervisor of a new section because of all the new employees. Lynn credits the work that he’s put into getting to know his new teammates as the reason for the selection.
“Most of the time, he isn’t even at his own desk. He’s looking over the shoulder of one of our newer engineers helping them. The sacrifice of his time and knowledge and abilities that he gives to others and in this onboarding process,” she said. “He has an advantage over the rest of us and he knows most of all of the new employees better than all the rest of us do.”
Magallanes also acknowledges the importance of organizations like SHPE and the impact they can have on young Hispanic engineers through the vast networking opportunity it provides, and he has stated he plans to be more involved with the organization moving forward.
“I’ve been reached out to by the actual organization, and they are really asking me now to really hit it full on and actually get a membership and actually getting synched with chapter and everything,” he explained.
He also noted the importance of never being satisfied with where you are in current state, and to always be striving to be something better.
“You always got to keep striving for more, not because of the recognition, not because of the benefits, but rather it would be disservice to yourself if you don’t keep pushing your limits, and I think that that is very eye-opening, and I can see how, in the past, I’ve kind of limited myself a little bit,” he explained further.
Aside from working as an engineer for the Air Force, Magallanes keeps his skills sharp in his off time as well through side projects that he even plans to get his children involved in.
“When I was attempting my master’s degree, I got to play with a simple continuous wave radar. It’s called a cantenna. It’s a play on words, but I kid you not, the antennas themselves are like coffee cans. So, I want to buy one and then I want to build one with my kids,” he said.
Magallanes volunteers with the local Hispanic community as well by engaging in local events such as Fiestas de las Américas, and even acknowledged how pleasantly surprising his experience living on the Oklahoma City area has been.
“When I moved here in 2016, I was a little scared because it is the middle of the country, but when I got here, everybody is so nice, and the city just feels like home,” he said. “And then, come to find out there’s an actual Hispanic population too. Hispanic, Asian, you name it.”
Magallanes also took time to thank his leadership for giving him the chance to excel while working for the 558th SWES.
“I’m so grateful for my leadership,” he said. “They’re just so good at balancing the dimension of the Air Force with my own personal life and own personal growth.”
Magallanes is scheduled to receive his STAR Managerial Excellence Award (Government) during the SHPE National Convention, which will take place in Anaheim, Calif., from Oct. 30 – Nov. 3.
For more information on the PAQ program, log onto https://afciviliancareers.com/recentgraduates/
| Date Taken: | 09.27.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.10.2024 16:07 |
| Story ID: | 482954 |
| Location: | TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Hometown: | CIUDAD JUAREZ, CHIHUAHUA, MX |
| Hometown: | EL PASO, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 12 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, A rising STAR in the 558th SWES: Edgar Magallanes, by Michael Tackitt, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
