Presidential Scholars Program<\/span><\/a> <\/span>the day before college applications were due, and I scrambled to submit my application in time.\u201d<\/p>\nChmura was accepted to UConn Engineering and received the scholarship which, combined with an engineering scholarship that covered the cost of his books, made UConn an affordable option. Karosi notes that after Chmura began his coursework, Whitcraft revised his work schedule to accommodate his studies. \u201cWe have a policy with our interns: school comes first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout his undergraduate years, Chmura worked 15-25 hours\/week, racing to Whitcraft after his classes concluded daily. The two experiences, along with his training at Ellis Tech, complemented each other nicely, according to Chmura.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy pre-UConn education prepared me 180 degrees differently from students who attended traditional high schools. I struggled initially through some of my gen-ed courses, but during my junior and senior years, when my engineering courses ramped up, I was better prepared and less stressed about my classes than many of my peers.\u201d<\/p>\n
After his reassignment to the engineering team throughout his years at UConn, Chmura found that once his engineering courses ramped up, he was able to apply his engineering lessons and contribute more actively on large projects at Whitcraft.<\/p>\n
One project he recalls with pride involved the design and development of an automated process for bending tubes at different angles. The French customer had been outsourcing the task to an outside vendor. Chmura designed and built a hydraulic machine capable of bending the tubes at two angles with minimal processing, enabling the customer to bring the process in-house and effectively cut production and distribution costs in half.<\/p>\n
For their senior design project at UConn, Chmura and his fellow team members, Callan Gruber and Waleed Zawawi (advised by Dr. Jiong Tang), worked on a project involving wheel optimization for sliding glass doors. The team developed a way to test various types of load wheels \u2014 the mechanism that supports the sliding motion of the door \u2014 for Stanley Access Technologies. The team\u2019s fully-automated test setup was able to accurately measure the rolling resistance of various types of loads while under different conditions (load, temperature, speed, direction, track surface materials) and achieve repeatable results. <\/span>The project netted the 2012 Mechanical Engineering senior design competition, receiving the top $1000 prize among all ME projects. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAfter Chmura earned his B.S. in May 2012, Whitcraft offered him a full-time salaried job. Karosi says, \u201cHe\u2019s doing phenomenally. He\u2019s working on a Raytheon missile project for which he serves as lead engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Karosi started keeping rack, the company has hosted seven UConn Engineering interns. Two of the company\u2019s engineers are currently pursuing their master\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering at UConn, with tuition reimbursement help from Whitcraft.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chmura is an outspoken advocate for Whitcraft, which he says \u201cmakes me feel appreciated.\u201d\u00a0 Furthermore, he says, Whitcraft provides an outstanding manufacturing environment because it is continually upgrading its equipment to include devices such as direct metal laser sintering and 3D prototyping machines, CAD software, laser cutting devices and other equipment. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine working for a better company,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tucked away in Connecticut’s Quiet Corner is a company that has been serving the world’s leading aerospace companies for decades, Whitcraft, LLC. Among its valued employees are four UConn Engineering alumni, including Chad Chmura, a Junior Engineer who received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2012. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":224562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57],"class_list":["post-15322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 23:44:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224563,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15322\/revisions\/224563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15322"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=15322"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"chad2\"](\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/chad2.jpg\")
<\/a>Tucked away in the Quiet Corner of Northeastern Connecticut is a mid-sized company that has been serving the world\u2019s leading aerospace companies for decades, Whitcraft<\/span><\/a><\/span>, LLC.\u00a0 At the company\u2019s Eastford facility, nearly 300 employees carry out highly technical specialty sheet metal fabrication and machining for companies like Pratt & Whitney, GE Aviation, Rolls Royce, Honeywell and other top names in aerospace.<\/p>\n