Taking Off

Menaka Abraham soared. The then 21-year-old had never been on a plane. This flight from India to Ohio marked the first time she’d ever left her homeland. “It was a first for everything,” she said.

Abraham grew up in Guntur and is the youngest of three siblings (all girls). “Our parents were estranged so we ended up living with our grandparents,” said Abraham. The India of today is, in many ways, different than the India of Abraham’s childhood. “It was sort of the expectation that you complete a bachelor’s degree, get married and you go in the direction the husband takes you,” she said.

Abraham and her sisters were fortunate in that they had a grandfather who believed in their potential and pushed them to reach it. “He’s the reason I’m here today,” said Abraham. “It was my dream to come to the United States and he made it happen by encouraging me.”

The young Menaka Abraham showed a knack for math. “My grandfather suggested I think about becoming an engineer,” she said. Abraham ended up earning an engineering degree from Nagarjuna University (NU). “I felt like a misfit in engineering,” she said. “I didn’t have the support structures that we try so hard to provide at UW Tacoma.”

As it turns out, Abraham did find a fit through the engineering program. “In my third year I got introduced to programming and I fell in love with it,” she said. “When you’re programming you are solving a problem and you’re trying to figure out how best to solve it and there’s something about that process that I enjoyed.”

Abraham decided she wanted to pursue a degree in computer science. “I knew I wanted to do this in the U.S.,” she said. Abraham applied to several computer science programs and ultimately decided to attend Wright State University in Dayton partially because it fit within her budget. “I did not know how difficult it would be to move to another country and be on your own,” she said.

An airplane brought Abraham to the “Buckeye State” but that’s not what propelled her. Her grandfather’s words and a personal philosophy pushed Abraham forward. “I’ve always liked change” she said. “I’m open to learning new things and experiencing different cultures.”

Those first few months in the United States were challenging but Abraham’s easy demeanor and affable nature helped her transition. “I was able to make friends and actually ended up as president of the university’s International Student Association,” she said. “One of the things we did is pick up students like me from the airport and help them get settled.”

Abraham graduated from Wright State in 1998 and took a position in Cincinnati. The job included a fair amount of driving, something Abraham didn’t know how to do. “I found this cheap car with a stick shift but needed someone to teach me,“ she said. Abraham found an instructor, a fellow student who also came to the U.S. from India to pursue an education. The pair became friends, then dated and eventually married.

The couple moved to the Tacoma area after Abraham’s husband got a job with Intel. “I went to work for Ernst & Young,” said Abraham. “I provided management consulting in computer science and information technology related areas.” The work required Abraham do a fair amount of traveling to different cities across the United States. “At one point I’d racked up 500,000 frequent flyer miles and was sick of traveling all the time.”

Abraham made the decision to change careers. She’d seen ads for teaching positions at Clover Park Technical College and Pierce College. “Clover Park was quick to interview me and gave me an offer,” she said. “I decided I’d try teaching and have mostly been doing it ever since.”

Abraham started teaching at Clover Park in 2002. She took a part-time lecturer position at UW Tacoma’s Institute of Technology (now the School of Engineering and Technology) a year later. Abraham was hired as a full-time lecturer at UW Tacoma before she left higher education to work as a defense contractor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. “I went back into industry and it was great, but I missed the students,” she said.

Abraham returned to UW Tacoma in 2010 and now works full-time as an associate teaching professor with SET. Students brought her back to the classroom, but that’s only part of the story. “I love being able to see my students learn and flourish and succeed,” she said. “Teaching is my happy place but it’s also very hard. It’s never the same from day-to-day and I’m constantly reevaluating what works. There’s always room for improvement, so I try not to get too comfortable because I think that limits growth and I want to continue growing.”

Airplanes are transformative machines. They take us places, provide prospective and bring us together. The engines needed to achieve the correct amount of thrust to propel an aircraft down the runway and into the sky are powerful. Educators like Abraham are airplanes. Their wisdom, experience, encouragement and openness are the engines guiding students forward.