Leader in Energy Industry Masters Change Management
09/01/2022
By Karen Angelo
She was a high school senior in March 1979 when a nuclear reactor overheated at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, causing a partial meltdown. It was the worst commercial nuclear power accident in U.S. history.
“I was about to graduate, and a lot of people were asking me why I would want to get into a career involving nuclear energy,” says McAndrews, who remembers oil embargoes and long lines at gas stations in the 1970s. “I wanted to be an engineer to find solutions to our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”
As a child, McAndrews grew up on Long Island and visited her extended family in Lowell. Familiar with UML’s success in graduating nuclear engineers, she transferred into the program as a sophomore.
“My professors challenged me in a way that helped me acquire critical thinking skills that I applied throughout my career,” says McAndrews. “They prepared me to think more broadly about how everything fits together and how they have to work together harmoniously.”
After graduating from the nuclear engineering program in 1984, McAndrews took a job at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, which was operating a single nuclear power plant. She rotated through several departments, earned her nuclear operator’s license and helped decommission the plant. From those experiences, she learned some critical lessons.
“To be a long-term viable nuclear plant, you need to invest in the people and the plant,” says McAndrews. “Toward the end of my time in Sacramento, I was involved in the de-staffing of the plant, and I found that I was good at managing change, especially the people and regulatory parts.”
McAndrews then was employed for decades at Southern California Edison, one of the nation's largest electric utilities, delivering power to 15 million people across central and coastal California. She worked at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), most recently as director of quality assurance, performance improvement, license renewal, seismic analysis and post-Fukushima disaster response.
Turning Point
Early in her career at Edison, McAndrews was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 39 years old. The health scare prompted her to set two goals—do more to find safer alternatives to fossil-fuel power plants, and live life more fully.
In her work, she implemented performance improvement methods, a new area for nuclear utilities in the early 2000s.
“It was groundbreaking trying to influence people to move beyond compliance to being self-critical and making improvements as they strive for excellence,” says McAndrews. “This is what I wanted to do since high school, and my education at UMass Lowell helped get me there by taking a holistic view of the issue and solutions.”
By 2011, McAndrews was working towards extending the operating licenses for SONGS and coordinating advanced seismic analysis with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography for the Pacific coastal area around the plant. When the Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred in Japan that year, McAndrews led the SONGS response for seismic analysis and incorporated lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.
However, after finding that the replacement steam generators had a design flaw in 2013, the San Onofre plant was shut down and is now being decommissioned and dismantled.
The electric supply mix was also changing in the United States, from large-scale power plants to energy resources at the distribution level. McAndrews directed a multiyear study to determine how distributed energy resources such as solar, wind and battery energy storage systems could offset electricity demand.
“I was able to continue to advance alternatives to building new fossil fuel plants while advancing some of California’s objectives for clean energy,” says McAndrews.
Meanwhile, to achieve her goal to live life more fully, McAndrews competed in road races and raised money for various charities, including cancer research.
“I’ve always been active and loved the outdoors, having run five Boston Marathons,” she says.
After retiring in 2018 at age 56, McAndrews moved from California to southwestern Colorado, where she bikes, hikes and skis in the surrounding mountains. Her most recent title in her LinkedIn profile is one that she hopes to continue for years to come: Outdoor Adventurer.
“I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished in my life, and I couldn’t have done it without the foundational education I received at UMass Lowell.” -Caroline McAndrewsMcAndrew credits her success—whether in engineering or in enjoying the great outdoors— to her education and the opportunities that it opened for her.
“I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished in my life, and I couldn’t have done it without the foundational education I received at UMass Lowell,” she says.
Grateful for the scholarships she received that helped fund her education, McAndrews started the McAndrews Family Endowment Scholarship Fund for Energy and Nuclear Engineering. To date, 10 undergraduate students have received the scholarship. She also has mentored students and participated in alumni events.
“I’ve led many big projects over my career, but I find real joy in bringing out the best in people, and I really like it when people do the same for me. Then, we all win,” she says.