 Case student-athlete Christine Sander thought she had her career mapped out during her junior year at Genoa High School in Genoa, Ohio. Neonatology was her calling.
“I was leaning toward being a doctor but was also interested in engineering,” explains Ms. Sander. “I had the opportunity to shadow a pediatrician during a C-section–and passed out.”
So engineering it was, and what better place to learn it than the mechanical and aerospace engineering department of the Case School of Engineering.
“Once I visited Case, I knew it was my number one choice academically,” says Ms. Sander. With her academic course set, Ms. Sander needed to make a less clear-cut decision–which sport to pursue at Case.
In high school, she excelled in three sports and choosing one collegiate sport wasn’t an easy process. “I wasn’t as sure what sport I would play. I started out playing basketball my freshman year, but it wasn’t until after I quit basketball that I decided to try volleyball.”
It was another good choice. Coming into this season, Ms. Sander has appeared on eleven different volleyball offensive and defensive career record lists. She is currently sixth on the all-time kills lists (1,001) and fourth in total blocks (140).
Success on the court and in the classroom led to a co-op in spring 2003. Ms. Sander worked for Swagelok, an industrial valve and fitting company on Cleveland’s East Side. She began reviewing functional gauges, but quickly moved forward.
“I got the opportunity to make a gauge from scratch,” she recalls. “I came up with the design, sent it off to get quotes, had the thing manufactured, assembled it, and then tested and validated it. That was the highlight of my co-op.”
Ms. Sander’s gauge is being used to this day to measure the thread depth of a nut that Swagelok produces. The company manufactures around 350 of these nuts an hour, and her gauge makes sure the depth remains consistent.
Ms. Sander is finishing undergraduate requirements that she missed during her co-op, and recenty began work on her Master of Engineering and Management degree through Case’s Institute for Management and Engineering (TiME).
“The plan is to do an internship next semester before returning to work on my master’s degree,” she explains, adding that she’d like to work for a consumer products company such as Radio Flyer.
“It was fun to see my gauge come out, but no one else is going to see it. Ideally, I would like to be able to walk into a retail store and say, ‘I made that or I fixed that.’” 
CREG JANTZ
Photograph by Jeff Blatnik
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