At Random: Afsaneh Jabbar

March 16, 2008 10:38 pm

— Reporter’s note: People have been inquiring about the identity of the “mystery woman” who continues to show up at various meetings, representing the city of Valdosta’s Department of Utilities Services. The Times inquired and solved the mystery. She is Afsaneh Jabbar, P.E. (Professional Engineer), assistant director of Utilities Services for the city. So how did this intelligent woman who excels at math, of all things, find her way from her home country of Iran to her position with the city? Well, we solved that mystery as well. Meet Afsaneh Jabbar.

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VALDOSTA — Afasaneh Jabbar is not from Muskogee, but she is an “Okie.” That is, the city of Valdosta’s assistant director of Utilities Services graduated from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Okla., “about 20 years ago” with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in civil engineering.
This month she celebrates her first year in her city position.
Jabbar hails from Kermanshah, Iran, where she was born. Kermanshah is approximately 500 miles southwest of Tehran, Iran’s capital city. She came to the U.S. on a visa to study, like some of her friends, engineering at the University of Oklahoma.
Turns out her high school years in Tehran put her on a career track to becoming a
professional engineer.
“I studied math in high school,” she explained. “Am I good at math? Not too bad,” she said with a wry grin.
“My emphasis in high school was in math,” she said. “You either pick math, science or literature. I chose math because I am good at it and it is interesting.”
Jabbar had friends from Iran studying mechanical engineering, most of whom received their degrees in that field from Oklahoma. She became a naturalized citizen five years after her arrival in the U.S.
She said she found the Valdosta job opening while researching potential career opportunities while working as the director of Utilities for the city of Shawnee, Okla., population approximately 30,000.
“I found the Valdosta job while looking on the city of Valdosta’s Public Works Web site,” she said.
Her husband, who is from Bangladesh, and their son remain in Oklahoma temporarily. Her son is studying mechanical engineering at Oklahoma U. He’s following in his mother’s footsteps, it turns out.
“My son is a true Okie, too... a real fan of all things Oklahoma University,” Jabbar said. “He loves the Sooners. I’m beginning to understand all this now,” she said with a chuckle.
Jabbar still has aunts and uncles who live in Iran, but her sister, mother and father live in California. She also has a brother who lives in France.
She says she got her first taste in engineering while majoring in the math track in high school. “It was just cool when I went to high school,” she said. “After you get your high school diploma, you have to choose your career.”
With her friends already studying mechanical engineering at OKU, she thought the choice was obvious.
With a year under her belt living in Valdosta, we asked Jabbar if there is any difference in “Okies” and “Georgia Crackers.”
“I don’t see any differences in the people,” Jabbar said. “The majority of them are very nice.” She has her Professional Engineer certification in Georgia and Oklahoma.
Finding females in professional engineering roles is becoming more common, Jabbar noted.
“When I was studying for my bachelor’s degree, there were only three women in my class,” she said. “At the master’s degree level, 30 percent were women. Now in the work field, I’d say there’s at least 30 percent who are women who practice civil engineering.”
Jabbar works under Utilities Services Director Leon Weeks in a city that is growing fast and needing more and more attention on its utilities system.
She said she got her first taste of how fast Valdosta is growing when making two trips to interview for the job.
“The first time I came, there were no rooms in the good hotels, so I stayed in a ‘two star’ hotel,” she said with a laugh. “The next time I came, there already were more new hotels and I didn’t have a problem getting a room at a nicer place.”
Jabbar keeps offices at 1022 Myrtle St., but realistically, spends more time roaming between city utility operations than she does behind a desk on Myrtle.
“Basically, my office is my car,” she said. “I’m constantly moving between the city’s two wastewater treatment plants (Mud Creek and Withlacoochee) and the water treatment plant (Guest Road off Bemiss Road). I got in on the tail end of the project to open the new water treatment plant here on Guest Road.”
Jabbar prefers to say she is in the environmental field, because her work to help shore up public water and wastewater systems has a positive environmental impact on the people she serves. City water and wastewater systems service approximately 50,000 people.
“The increase in life expectancy in this country is due more to advances in water and wastewater treatment than it is to medical advances,” Jabbar said. “Basically, we are saving lives. A lot of people don’t realize this. So it is a public service that is very rewarding.”
Jabbar said she has great respect for the retiring Weeks, and says the level of professionalism in the more than 100 employees who work in city utilities makes her job easier. She and Weeks divide up oversight of the employees, with Jabbar managing 50 and Weeks, 57.
“He’s a great boss,” Jabbar said of Weeks. “The city already is very much ahead of the game, as far as being prepared to meet the current and future demand for water and sewer service. That’s because of very good planning. It makes my job much easier. It is much easier to go through expansion when you don’t need it right away. You then have time to plan for it, fix existing problems, and build in advance to meet the coming demand.”
Asked what she likes most about Valdosta, Jabbar said: “The architecture, especially downtown in the historic district.”
Her current projects include helping to oversee the design phase for a second transmission line from the Guest Road water treatment plant and a wastewater collection rehabilitation program that will expose problem areas in the existing system and then schedule those for repairs and upgrades.”
“I love construction work the best,” she said. “Construction is very exciting work.”
So a female math major from Tehran, Iran became an “Okie” who majored in mechanical engineering at OKU and is now assistant director of Utilities Services for Valdosta, home of great historic architecture and an advanced utilities system, two-star and four-star hotels.
Got it.

Photos

Afsaneh Jabbar