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As an archer, James R. Fanelli aimed straight. As an aspiring plastics professional, he zigzagged between continents. The Pennsylvania College of Technology alumnus hit "bull's-eye" with both approaches.
One led to a championship, the other to a rewarding career.
The 2010 graduate is a senior tooling plastics engineer for Medtronic, a leading global health care technology company. Fanelli supports the development and production of components and devices utilized during open, laparoscopic and robotic-assisted surgical procedures, from access and instrumentation tools to internal tissue and skin stapling technology.
"As I started to work on finished devices and understanding their real-life applications, it made me really proud to support products that are used on a patient in their time of need," said Fanelli, who is stationed at Medtronic's campus in North Haven, Connecticut.
The location is one of 350 worldwide for Medtronic, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. His company's Irish roots are appropriate considering that Fanelli obtained a master's degree in plastics engineering at Queen's University in Belfast, about two hours north of Dublin.
But first he earned his bachelor's in plastics and polymer engineering technology at Penn College.
Fanelli's father discovered the school while searching online for colleges offering hands-on engineering-related majors. Years of building theater sets for school plays generated Fanelli's interest in engineering. A neighbor working in plastics introduced him to career options in that field. A trip from his home in Glastonbury, Connecticut, to Penn College sealed the deal.
The college is one of six institutions nationwide offering plastics degrees that are accredited by the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET. Its state-of-the-art labs facilitate hands-on experience with the various industrial manufacturing processes for plastics. And the program boasts a near-100% graduate placement rate.
"It offered the best of hands-on along with the theory of plastics, as well as classes in statistics and computer software, to help you become a well-rounded engineer," Fanelli explained. "It would give me the footing, fundamentals and basic principles of plastics.
ConMed, a global medical device company, was the first to tap into that knowledge. Fanelli spent three of his five years at ConMed, a global medical device company, as part of a small team that traveled back and forth to Europe. They transferred ConMed products, assets and technology related to bioabsorbable implants from a facility in Finland to a New York location.
"I was able to grow myself into a uniquely specialized plastics engineer in the medical device industry," Fanelli said about his ConMed tenure.
That growth led to his current role at Medtronic where he supports manufacturing teams throughout the globe for the company's Surgical Innovations Group.
"I strive to ensure that our parts and components are of the highest quality before they make their way downstream. I need to be confident that I would use the product on myself before the project is closed," he said.