Genna Frederick ‘12

Major: Engineering
Technical and Process Manager at Metalwerks

Deduction is detective work. It’s the systematic process of gathering individual facts and synthesizing them into a comprehensive conclusion about a particular phenomenon. It’s the kind of work an engineer does, as well, in employing knowledge to understand the relationships between various forces. It’s also the type of process some Christians go through coming to a realization about their identity in Christ and their purpose and calling in life.

These types of deduction define the life of Genna Frederick ’12. Genna is the Technical & Process Manager for medical products specialty metals manufacturer, Metalwerks, Inc., based in Aliquippa, PA. There she leads a team in producing metal from materials used for medical product implants such as joint replacements and reconstructive plates for people who have had catastrophic bone fractures. Daily she calls on what she learned Geneva of manufacturing and material science, physics and chemistry to develop new processes or investigate a defect in a product and figuring out how it came to be.

“You’re pulling from your knowledge of how these things work, how physics works, ruling these out one at a time, so you can make an educated guess,” she explains. “So much of what I learned I’m able to draw from. And learning the fundamentals of chemistry and physics works into understanding the forces that are at play in all of these processes.”

Genna’s path to Geneva was not an easy one. She started in the engineering program at a large public university. Then she suffered through the death of her sister. It was a dark time for Genna and a breaking point. In her grief, she felt vulnerable. She needed safety support, a place for healing and help in finding hope in the right things. She decided to transfer from her school, and on advice from Geneva alumni brother and sister in-law, Ken ‘08 and Amanda Caler ‘09), she came to Geneva. What she found was a small, Christian community that provided the safe learning environment needed and a chance to grapple with the issues of life.


“I was asked questions at Geneva that I never knew I would need the answers for,” she says, giving credit to Geneva’s Humanities and Core Curriculum for helping her dig into the deep topics of life. Wrestling with difficult questions like, “What is freedom?” and “What does it mean to be human?,” were a chance for her to understand who she was and her place in God’s plan.
She began to see the nature in which God created her and how to use her gifts and everything God has given, including her career. As she worked toward answers to these questions, they became her core beliefs.

“Those core beliefs became anchors that I was able to hold onto during that time and throughout the years,”
Genna recalls. “Decisions became a lot easier than if those things hadn’t already been settled in my heart. I am so thankful for the time I was given at Geneva to work through those issues.”

Genna’s first Humanities assignment at Geneva was a paper about death. When she learned about it, she sought out the professor to explain her situation. Genna says, the professor thanked her for telling her the story and then hugged her. It was the first time she remembers anyone thanking her for informing them of the news of the grief with which she was dealing. After the class under a steady rain, Genna crouched by a bench, alone and crying. A stranger stopped and prayed quietly for her. Then the stranger asked her to go to lunch. The clues were mounting; she reasoned that this was the type of community she’d hoped to find.

Trading the big school for the smaller school brought changes. Genna went from being in large engineering classes of 100 or more students with just a few women to being in smaller ones at Geneva where up to half of the class was women. Her experience at Geneva was fulfilling, both from feeling prepared for a career and vocation and in getting needed social and spiritual support, especially from highly trained, Christian professors.

Genna’s professors had a profound influence, from herapproach to her engineering studies to her pursuit of a higher calling through the knowledge and skills she was attaining. It even changed how she looked at her own identity.

After putting the pieces of her life and experiences together, along with answers to questions she found at Geneva, she deduced an important conclusion about her career: it is not all about career, but a career and a job are important ways to serve.