A few times a year, physics professor Glenn Piner would pack up his telescopes, grab a bunch of his students, and drive out to Joshua Tree National Park for a weekend of star-gazing.
“Star parties were extra-magical,” Scurr said. “We’d go out where there was no light pollution, barbecue hot dogs, and watch meteor showers and shooting stars.”
At the time, Scurr, a physics major, was looking forward to graduate engineering work at the University of Southern California. He didn’t fully realize it then, but these events sparked a love of the outdoors that he’s now getting to explore while working as an engineer at Turner Construction — one of the nation’s largest and most respected construction management companies.
The road from Joshua Tree to Zion had many twists for Scurr, but they all started when he enrolled at Whittier. He loved physics and engineering, so he was attracted by the 3-2 program Whittier has with USC. He could focus on physics at Whittier for three years, then transfer to USC to dig into engineering, getting a head start on his master’s degree at the same time.
Along the way, he found a mentor in Piner, who brought students into his research and encouraged them to seek internship opportunities. Scurr took that advice to heart and dove into physics clubs, job fairs, and off-campus groups like the Associated Schools of Construction. It was through events like ASC’s intercollegiate competitions that Scurr fell in love with the practical fieldwork of construction.
“They were like hackathons,” he said. “We would stay up for two to three days in a row, immersed in a super-condensed version of the real-world contractor bidding process.”
He soon came to the attention of Turner Construction, a 123-year-old corporate icon in the field of large project management. He scored back-to-back internships and then, not long after he graduated, a full-time job as an engineer. He’s currently finishing up two rewarding projects: an expansion of the emergency and urgent care wings at Emanate Health Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina and a complete renovation of the utility plant at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills.
His job is to serve as a liaison between the Turner corporate engineering team and all of the subcontractors in the field as they build out any given project. He relies on his communication skills, which he says he developed at Whittier, as much as his engineering talents.
“I use those every single day, adapting to whomever I’m speaking with,” Scurr said, adding, “and those came from being well-rounded and exposed to people studying all sorts of fields at Whittier, from art students to theater majors.”
He plans to stay with Turner for many years and is excited by the prospect of constantly taking on new challenges with exciting new projects. But in the meantime, he’s eager to pack his camping gear and get back out into the wild, sleeping under the cosmos. The goal for this year? A trip to Yosemite, one of nature’s most awe-inspiring feats of engineering.
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