Spotlight on Engineering Assistant III Barbara Callahan

I came to The Oceanographic in October of 1998. I was home with 3 year old twins and anxious to start a new career, different from retail advertising which I had done in Boston for the previous 9 years before my children were born.

Sheila Payne, who started the Buttery, called me to see if I would be interested in helping her out at the Buttery baking and making sandwiches for the WHOI employees. I worked at the Buttery for 8 years, taking over as manager for Sheila when she retired.

In 2006, I went to work in the stockroom in the Smith building with Glenn Enos and Sam Lomba. My exposure to hardware and learning about quality control led me to a fantastic opportunity working in the Mooring Lab for Rick Trask.

For the last 11 years, I have worked in the Mooring Lab in the PO department. My job responsibilities in the Mooring Lab allow me to work with a lot of different people. I usually work with anyone who has a mooring built or borrows equipment from the Mooring Lab to arrange shipment or create a loan for equipment needed for an upcoming cruise. I work closely with Sam in the Stockroom to ensure all commodities (wire, chain, synthetic, swages, boots, eyebolts, hard hats and wooden reels) are available to fabricators to build the moorings and with Walter and his crew in the warehouse where we store our commodities. In addition to maintaining an extensive database of mooring components we store at the warehouse for WHOI scientists, I also test vessel wire for the NSF Wire Pool. Twenty seven research vessels send a sample of the wire(s) they use on board. I terminate the sample, pull test the sample in one of our two hydraulic testbeds and then test each individual strand in an e-kink test or mandrel wrap test. I work with Rick Trask, the Wire Pool Manager, to report our test results, offer recommendations and maintain the UNOLS wire database.

From April to September, I can be found in my garden after work and on weekends. I enjoy growing vegetables and all kinds of flowers. In the winter months, I enjoy cooking and baking and when able to travel, my husband and I enjoy diving in Cancun.