Bedillion emphasizes happiness and fulfilment as Milestone Moments speaker

Mark Bedillion’s professional journey to becoming a teaching professor was unconventional. At a recent Center for Faculty Success Milestone Moments program, Bedillion shared his unique career path with faculty, staff, and students from the College of Engineering Community.

The idea of a nonlinear career path may seem unusual and difficult, especially to engineering students who seek more clear-cut paths to industry or academia. Bedillion, however, found both fulfillment and joy in his unique career trajectory. 

“I haven’t taken the most direct path, but there is something to be gained from switching around,” Bedillion explains.

Bedillion’s lifelong philosophy has always centered around gaining joy from what he was doing. In his early years, engineering wasn’t even on Bedillion’s radar. He jokingly recalls disliking Legos, a contrast to the typical engineer’s backstory of Legos being a precursor to a passion for engineering. Instead, Bedillion pursued his own passions in skateboarding, drumming, and even history. 

Bedillion was introduced to engineering as an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. He recalls being “moldable” in that he could have pursued any degree, but Bill Messner’s Control Systems course inspired him to pursue mechanical engineering. As an undergraduate, Bedillion conducted research on power plant emissions with Mark Rubin and presented his first paper to the EPA in 1998.  

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Bedillion considered graduate school but wanted to enter the workforce instead. His first job after graduation was with Teradyne, an automatic test equipment designer and manufacturer as a sustainable engineer, reworking old pieces of technology. This job came with some perks, like the opportunity to travel throughout Europe, but ultimately Mark realized that the more interesting work at Teradyne was being done by people with graduate degrees. So, he decided to return to Carnegie Mellon and pursue his master’s and Ph.D.  

Life is not an optimization problem.

Mark Bedillion, Teaching Professor, Director of Academic Operations, Mechanical Engineering

When he returned to Carnegie Mellon as a graduate student, it was once again Bill Messner who would ignite his passion for engineering. As a graduate student, Bedillion researched flexible manipulation systems and, ironically, took more courses in the Robotics Institute and in electrical and computer engineering than in mechanical engineering. While excelling in his research, Bedillion also excelled in the classroom, winning the Best TA Award twice during his time at CMU.

After earning his Ph.D., Bedillion again considered a career in academia or in industry. He knew that he disliked writing papers and proposals and getting up in front of students to teach made him anxious. So he leveraged some of his advisor’s connections and returned to industry. Bedillion acknowledged that he didn’t enjoy writing grants and publishing.

Bedillion secured a position with Seagate, working as a research staff member, a servo-mechanical subsystem lead, and eventually a research engineering manager. He built disk drives, developed probe-based data storage and, through the many presentations he had to give, eventually overcame his fear of public speaking.

As with all of his other positions, Bedillion made the most of his time with Seagate. He was excited by the work he was doing, earned promotions within the company, and enjoyed the financial bonuses that came his way. One downside of industry was the relative instability; he saw colleagues get laid off and was forced to relocate his family to Colorado. This instability is what ultimately led Mark to leave industry and return to academia. 

Bedillion accepted a position as an associate teaching professor at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. While at Mines, he earned tenure and graduated his first Ph.D. student. He really enjoyed teaching, but he still loathed writing proposals, so when a teaching track position opened up in CMU’s Mechanical Engineering Department, the prospect seemed very appealing. He would need to relocate his family, but Rapid City, SD had started to feel a bit too remote to him and his family anyway. Perhaps more significantly, Bedillion would need to forfeit his tenure, as the teaching track position was not tenure-eligible. 

In the end, Bedillion decided that the sacrifice and move were worth it, and he returned to the familiar streets of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Mellon campus in 2016. Fittingly, one of the first courses he taught was Control Systems, the class that started his academic career in engineering. Since then, Bedillion has taught a variety of courses and led several educational initiatives. His passion for engineering education has made a lasting impact on his students. “He is a professor who genuinely cares about the overall development of students,” says Jon Cagan, department head of mechanical engineering. 

Interestingly, Bedillion’s position as a teaching professor allows him to pursue his teaching interests while still maintaining a foothold in industry. He spends his summers working for Aerotech as a visiting researcher. This gives him a chance to, as he puts it, “be an engineer,” and he brings these “real world” examples to his classroom. Students appreciate the opportunity to apply their knowledge to problems that they will face when they enter the workforce, and Bedillion enjoys the novelty that these summer months bring to his work.

Moving forward, Bedillion hopes to continue to learn throughout his career, primarily by teaching new courses. “I never fully understood the topic until I had to teach it,” he explains. Other than expanding the courses he teaches, he affirms that he is happy with where he is right now.

“Life is not an optimization problem,” he says. “I know people who have been promoted one too many times, and they are miserable. You can stop and say, ‘I’m satisfied now.’”