ASEM Awards First Ever Dr. Martha Bidez Scholarship

Edwin Cueva, a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Engineering, recently became the first recipient of the Dr. Martha Bidez Endowed Scholarship in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management (ASEM).

 Edwin de la Cueva 250Cueva, an Environmental Health and Safety Manager, is in his second year with ASEM, which is a concentration within the Master of Engineering degree program. He received the inaugural scholarship for his outstanding contributions to the environmental health and safety engineering field during his enrollment at UAB.

“It was my pleasure to present Edwin with the scholarship,” said ASEM Director Donald Burke, Ph.D.,. “The scholarship review committee stated that his accomplishments as a student and his professional leadership in his field made him standout for the award. Having known Martha well, I believe Edwin’s initiative and effort is a true reflection of what this scholarship aims to represent.”

  • Criteria for recipients include:
  • current enrollment in ASEM;
  • academic achievement;
  • at least six credit hours in ASEM earning at least a 3.0 GPA;
  • and leadership in the safety field.

Applicants were required to describe in a personal essay their accomplishments, career aspirations, and outstanding achievements through their individual work initiative, positions in professional societies and other leadership roles that advance the field of safety engineering.

As the Environmental Health and Safety Manager for ESP Associates Inc in Charlotte, North Carolina, Cueva currently leads a safety team, which includes three safety coordinators and two safety technicians. Together they conduct worksite inspections, perform air and water testing, instruct OSHA related safety classes, and train employees on safe machine operations.

Cueva has also participated in multiple health and safety professional programs where he became certified as: an OSHA-500 Authorized Bilingual Trainer; an American Red Cross Bilingual Instructor; and a CSX/Norfolk Southern Trainer.

“These certification accomplishments have given me the opportunity to provide companies and their employees with distinct safety information, helping them learn different safety tactics, along with keeping them compliant.”

Additionally, Cueva participates in his local community chapters of the National Safety Council, Associated Builders and Contractors Carolinas, and the Union County Chamber of Commerce.

Furthermore, Cueva’s deep passion for safety and proud Latino heritage led him in 2017 to create the Carolinas Safety Group Inc. During his enrollment at UAB, Cueva utilized his Spanish-speaking skills and safety knowledge, dedicating his time after work and weekends to growing his company which aids general industry and construction clients in his area.

I have dedicated my career to pushing the health and safety initiative, especially within the Latino population and blue-collared workers,” said Cueva. “My education placed me in a mindset of serving others to help them work safely and return them home without complications. Whether it has been educating employees on the importance of wearing a Hi-Vis Class II vest on a jobsite or explaining the dangers of electrical currents, safety has become a day-to-day activity in my daily living.”

According to Cueva, receiving the scholarship helped increase his chances to graduate sooner than he anticipated.

“It is encouraging, not only as a graduate student but also a Latino professional, to receive recognition for dedication and sacrifice, something I believe Dr. Bidez focused much of her Engineering work and research on,” said Cueva. “Like her, I would like to leave a mark in the field of Safety Engineering and this award gives me the motivation to believe that support exists from entities like UAB.”

In a career that spanned more than 35 years, Bidez helped make the world safer place. After earning multiple engineering degrees from UAB, Bidez led a distinguished career in both the academic and private sectors that established her as one of the nation’s foremost authorities in safety engineering.

“Much like Martha pioneered the ASEM program here at UAB back in 2009, many of our students may also lead their own safety programs within their companies and institutions,” said Burke. “I like to think that her legacy will live on through their work in safety engineering for years to come.”

The Master of Engineering with a concentration in ASEM is the first master’s degree in engineering with a safety emphasis offered totally online. By teaching students both the language of engineering as well as safety concepts, graduates are able to bridge the divide between design engineers and occupational safety and health professionals.

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BioHorizons is a Birmingham company whose history is rooted in UAB. Today, thanks to a growing and successful co-op program, it appears that BioHorizons and UAB will continue to be linked far into the future.

The dental-implant company, which started as a spinoff of research from the UAB Schools of Engineering and Dentistry, has hired more than a dozen UAB alumni and students over the past 28 years. More recently, though, its co-op program has begun to bring in current engineering undergraduates—creating a talent pipeline for students to get a head start in a growing industry.

“Hands-on experience has always been a key element of engineering education,” said Neil Adams, director of the Engineering Career Center. “The success of our program depends on strong co-op and intern partners, like BioHorizons, who offer quality experiences to our students so that they apply their engineering knowledge while also learning how to be a contributing part of a professional organization. We are proud of this continued partnership and look forward to supporting Blazer engineering co-ops at BioHorizons for many years to come.”

A Blazer Legacy

BioHorizons was started in 1995 by the late Martha Bidez, Ph.D., then a faculty member in the School of Engineering who would serve as the company’s first CEO before selling the company and returning to UAB in 2009. Over the years, the company has hired a number of UAB alumni, including several members of its leadership team (see sidebar).

In 2016, however, the company’s ties to UAB got a little closer when Ashley Boggs became the first UAB undergraduate to join the BioHorizons co-op program—a program that provides students the opportunity to work full-time at the company for three semesters, alternating with school. The experience is paid, and students work alongside engineers throughout their time at the company.

Boggs extended her co-op by working part-time at the company until she was hired full time after she graduated in 2018. Today, she is a Digital Dentistry Engineering Manager, and she credits her co-op experience for opening her eyes to possibilities she had never previously considered.

“I had a vague idea that I wanted to work with implants—like hips, knees, ankles—but I didn’t know anything about the dental-implant industry at all,” said Boggs. “During my sophomore year, I went to the Engineering Career Center and told them that I couldn’t keep sitting in class doing problems from a book. They told me about a local company called BioHorizons that was doing on-campus interviews.”

The interview changed Boggs’s personal career trajectory, but her story is not an unusual one. While the engineering curriculum prepares students for a wide variety of careers, it’s often that first on-the-job experience that opens eyes and doors to career opportunities in fields students may have never been aware of.

That was the case for UAB graduate Jonathan Gordon, another former co-op participant who now works as a packaging engineer for BioHorizons. “I started out on a pre-med track, but coming from a very small town to UAB was a big transition,” Gordon said. “I dropped the pre-med route pretty quickly and started looking for other options.”

Like Boggs, the Engineering Career Center helped connect Gordon with a co-op position at BioHorizons, and that, in turn, led to full-time employment. “I realized pretty quickly that I love this industry. It’s exciting to be a part of this.”

An Undergraduate Pipeline

Although Boggs was the first UAB student hired into BioHorizons' co-op program, she soon had company. Three other Blazers followed her into the program (Josh Moore, Karly Casey and Gordon), and all four stayed on to work full-time. That kind of retention is notable for an undergraduate experience that by its nature is often exploratory. 

“Since we started the co-op program about 10 years ago, we have had about 17-18 engineering students in our program—two of which have been in our regulatory department and the rest in research and development,” said Tom Lewis, BioHorizons manager of product engineering. “We feel that it has been very successful, and to date we have hired five as full-time employees.”

That transition from co-op to full-time employee makes sense when you consider the investment BioHorizons makes in students over a three-semester co-op. Each student must learn Quality System processes before getting down to work with tasks, such as design control, drawing release, and CAD modeling. “Each student is trained, but it takes hands-on involvement to learn all of these processes,” Lewis said. “It’s also helpful for students to experience how different departments work together for a common goal.”

In addition, students must learn industry standards and technologies in the medical device industry. “This takes longer,” Lewis said, “but over time they begin to understand the ‘whys’ behind the design of dental implants, restorative components and instruments. Although we have the expectation that co-ops produce for us, my hope is that when they look back they realize the value of their experience here, and as they move into their careers they have a head start in their understanding of engineering organizations."

“Co-op is both an investment by the company and a commitment by the student,” added Adams. “The depth of experience pays dividends in that co-op students are ready to contribute immediately at an organization after graduation.”

 

“I have been part of teams in which we have drawn and developed state of the art dental surgery kits that are slated to hit the market this year; I have managed drafting and conducting test plans to research the durability of implant designs; and, most importantly, I have been able to teach incoming co-ops the ins and outs of the company and guide them as they grow from a college student into true engineers.”
—Benjamin Pody, mechanical engineering student and 2nd-year co-op

 

Homegrown Talent

Lewis says the co-op program historically has drawn from several area universities, but he admits UAB students have one obvious advantage. “Since they are local, they already have living arrangements,” he said. “After completing the three co-op terms, students return to school to finish up and graduate.  With UAB being in town, when the opportunity was available several UAB students have stayed on and worked part-time until graduation.  The company knowledge they have has allowed them to be productive even on a part-time basis.”

While the growth of BioHorizons’ co-op program is exciting for current and future engineering students, UAB School of Engineering Dean Jeff Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., says that is just one of the reasons UAB engineers should look at the BioHorizons story with pride.

“It’s not unusual for a promising startup to spin off from university research—in this case, arising from research in the UAB Schools of Engineering and Dentistry,” said Holmes. “We often comment that these startups have the potential to revolutionize an industry. But in the case of BioHorizons, it has actually done that, and it continues to innovate and to grow. I am tremendously excited that our students are able to be a part of that continuing UAB success story.”

“At BioHorizons, we look forward to continuing our work with UAB in the future,” agreed Lewis. “We appreciate the relationship we have developed with the university that has served us well over the years.”

 

BioHorizons Senior Leadership

A glance at the BioHorizons team shows a number of UAB graduates among the senior leadership.

R. Steve Boggan, President and CEO

  •   M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

J. Todd Strong, Executive VP and COO

  •   M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

Mike Mills, Executive VP and CFO

  •   B.S. from UAB Collat School of Business

Andrew Baroody, VP of Sales Operations

  •   B.A. in English from UAB

Juan Jaramillo, VP of Global Business Support

  •   UAB Graduate

Fred J. Molz, IV, VP of Research and Development

  •   M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

Elbert Jenkins II, VP of Information Technology

  •   MEng in Information Engineering Management from UAB
  •   MBA from the UAB Collat School of Business

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