MechSE honors 2015 graduate Draper

Kye Draper (BSME ’15) was on campus in April to receive an Outstanding Young Alumni award from the MechSE Department. 

“Growing up, my first full time job was on a pig farm, 14-hour days. And I think that's where I've developed a deep appreciation of working with my brain,” Draper said. “I don't always use the theories and all the things I've learned in MechSE in my day to day work, but I am using the ability to solve problems in an engineering environment.”

As Head of Engineering at thyssenkrupp Dynamic Components, Kye leads 30 engineers in Manufacturing Engineering, Process Engineering, and Energy Management. His Manufacturing sub-team is responsible for holistic efficiency improvements in current production streams, targeting quality and cost optimizations through several activities including Industry 4.0 and traditional automation. His Process Engineering sub-team is responsible for bringing in new processes and products into the campus portfolio, essential to the long-term success through handoff of processes with acceptable performance to the Operations team. Lastly, he is the campus Energy Manager, acting as the leader for the site in terms of sustainability through energy usage reduction, green energy procurement, and ISO50001 Energy Management certification. Kye started as an intern while in the MechSE program, and has held several positions through Manufacturing, recently taking over all campus engineering departments.

Kye was a successful transfer story into the MechSE Department. He was an active member of Pi Tau Sigma and acted as Fundraising Chair his senior year. Notably, he received Highest Honors upon graduation and his senior design team won the ME 470 Senior Design Outstanding Achievement Award. He thrived in settings where he was allowed to put his engineering education into practice through design and problem solving in team-oriented settings. This, along with the foundations provided by MechSE didn’t teach him how to engineer, rather how to be an engineer and help others learn nimbly alongside him.