Co-ops and internships in engineering launch careers

Real-world experiences benefit students and their employers

Mentors play key roles in career success

By Laura Gater
Contributing Editor

Co-ops and internships are recognized by colleges, students and employers as practical and effective ways to get real-world experience and skills as well as exposure to corporate life. A robust internship history can give a job applicant an important advantage.

Valuing diversity
Employers are looking for diversity. “Ford is a global business. Our performance will be determined by the breadth and the depth of our inclusion of all of our people. The more we embrace our differences within Ford: diversity of thought, experience, perspective, race, gender, faith and more, the better we can deliver what the customers want and the more successful Ford will be,” explains Alan Mulally,
president and CEO, Ford Motor Co (Dearborn, MI).

F. David Coleman, general manager of corporate diversity and inclusion at U.S. Steel (Fairfield, AL),
and Lawrence Pope, executive vice president of administration and chief human resources officer for Halliburton (Houston, TX), agree. “Our ability to create an environment of respect, acceptance and understanding throughout our company is key to achieving our corporate vision,” says Coleman.

“The world is changing and business opportunities along with it,” adds Pope. “Halliburton has operations in seventy countries. We’re committed to creating a workforce that is a reflection of the diverse communities in which we operate. The greater the diversity in our workforce, the better the likelihood of our employees identifying innovative, alternative solutions to meet the changing needs of our customers.”

These career techies are enjoying the benefits of a diverse workplace after successfully making the transition from co-op or intern to full-time employee.

ME Andres Gutierrez is in Ford’s rotational program

Andres Gutierrez is a mechanical engineer in the Ford College Graduate (FCG) program. FCG is a three-year program for new hires, who rotate jobs every six months. Gutierrez is in his fourth rotation, in the transmission and driveline division.

Gutierrez was born and raised in Detroit, and is following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both of whom worked for Ford. His father was also a Ford engineer.

Gutierrez graduated from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI) in 2005 with a BSME and began working at Ford in May 2006. He’s one of approximately 200 current FCG program participants. At the end of the program he’ll take a permanent job in one of his rotation departments.

“FCG has given me an in-depth look at how the company works,” he says. “I enjoy the variety of the rotations. I especially like researching issues and working with the design engineers. I already know that I want to be in transmission systems.”

So far Gutierrez has done rotations in transmission systems, vehicle final assembly, and component design and release. In transmission systems he did transmission fluid fill studies, coordinated functional trial runs, and supported the launch of a six-speed front-wheel-drive transmission.

In vehicle final assembly he supervised eight different lines within the chassis and trim final assembly area. In component design and release he resolved assembly and design issues for hubs, shells and one-way clutches for the company’s FN and CD4E transmissions. His biggest challenge so far has been supervising thirty people in vehicle final assembly.

Gutierrez was a co-op engineer for Visteon Corp (Van Buren Township, MI) for nearly three years while he was in college. There he worked in climate control, air handling, CAD and manufacturing. That experience prepared him for the FCG program by exposing him to a manufacturing environment and familiarizing him with corporate culture.

FCG managers serve as mentors and help program participants plan their next rotations based on their interests and abilities. Gutierrez’s next rotation, in June, will be with the powertrain launch team. He will travel to Mexico, an experience he’s looking forward to.

Gutierrez happily attends school career days and career fairs in the Detroit area. He enjoys working with kids and is an assistant high school baseball coach in his free time. He’s planning to get a masters in engineering.

JCI’s Crystal Grayl creates high-voltage systems for hybrids

Crystal Grayl is an electrical engineer in the applications division of Johnson Controls, Inc (Milwaukee, WI). She interned in the company’s power solutions division from May through November 2005 and was hired full time immediately after graduation.

During her internship she did some benchmarking for high-voltage battery systems for hybrid vehicles, which involved looking at competitors’ battery systems and then setting up tests for Johnson Controls’ own systems. “I also did a variety of other testing, but the high voltage battery systems testing was my main project.”

In high school, she recalls, she asked some of her teachers what they thought she’d do well at and they answered “engineering.” She didn’t know anything about the field, she says.

She certainly does now. “When I was younger I wasn’t encouraged to pursue my interest in Formula cars. But for my senior design project in college, I was able to design one.” Grayl got her BSEE from the Milwaukee School of Engineering (Milwaukee, WI) in November 2005.

She is now part of the Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions team, a joint venture with a French battery producer. Her job involves creating custom high-voltage system prototypes and sending them into production. The company’s increasing involvement in hybrid vehicles has given Grayl the chance to oversee projects from design to manufacturing. She is pleased to be working with today’s “hot” hybrid vehicle technology.

Her internship provided her with a wealth of knowledge about the hybrid’s battery pack, knowledge that she has been able to utilize since she was hired full time. “Internships are about seeing if you’re a good fit for the company and if you like the work,” Grayl comments.

She credits her internship supervisor on the Advanced Power Solutions team for teaching her about the field. He didn’t micromanage her, but advised her and gave her the freedom to apply her own skills and knowledge, she says.

Before she interned with Johnson Controls, Grayl worked at the Fluid Power Institute (Milwaukee, WI) for two years as an undergraduate research assistant. She was responsible for project management and data acquisition and instrumentation. Grayl is outnumbered by her male peers, but that doesn’t bother her. She is more conscious of the age gap between her and her co-workers, most of whom have worked in the field for more than twenty years. The company is growing, though, and new hires are closer to her age, she says. And they’re increasingly diverse.

She is currently working on an MBA at the University of Wisconsin (Whitewater, WI) that she hopes to complete in 2010. Then she’d like to go into management or at least get more involved in the business side of the industry. “This is a very dynamic work environment. Another degree will open more doors in the company for me.”

Karthik Revana is a reservoir engineer at Halliburton

From May to August 2004 Karthik Revana interned in chemical/petroleum engineering in the asset performance consulting section of Halliburton (Houston, TX). He designed and built a unified database of all the consulting projects in the division’s various areas: prospect generation, drilling and completions, field development planning, and production optimization. He worked with geologists, geophysicists and engineers, and generated cost and benefit analyses.

“I didn’t do very technical work as an intern, but I learned what was involved in drilling for oil. This is a very interdisciplinary field and the internship was an eye opener for me,” he explains. “It was my first industry internship in the U.S. and it helped me learn about work and culture here. ”

Revana earned a BE in ChE in 2003 from Visvesvaraya Technological University in India. He came to the U.S. in 2005 for an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas (Austin, TX). Today he is working on a master of engineering via distance learning through Texas A&M University (College Station, TX).

“I pretty much stumbled into engineering. In high school in India, students can choose a specialty. I was good in science and especially enjoyed chemistry, so my teachers and parents encouraged me to go into engineering.”

He says that many of his ChE courses related to the environment, which stimulated his interest in petroleum engineering. A petroleum engineer has to understand the constitution of fluids and Revana’s background in ChE proved helpful.

After graduation Revana went from intern to full-timer at Halliburton. From 2005 to 2006 he was a reservoir consultant in asset decision solutions for the company’s digital and consulting services. He did reservoir simulation consulting, upstream project risk and uncertainty analysis, and statistical analysis of exploration activity using specialized statistical visualization software.

“Oil industry professionals rarely spend their whole careers in one country,” he notes. “Halliburton consulting opportunities have taken me to Mexico and Europe so far.”

Since late 2006 Revana has been a decision management system (DMS) product architect in reservoir management R&D for Halliburton’s drilling and evaluation division. Basically, he says, he’s a reservoir engineer who works with customers to understand the details of their optimization, uncertainty and usability issues. He monitors external and internal technologies that might help solve DMS problems or enhance work flows. He has acquired very specialized skills, like an understanding of grid computing for high performance flow simulation. He’s learned to construct economic models for the evaluation and ranking of field development scenarios.

Although he’s never had a formal mentor, Revana has always sought out people who could help him develop his career. He looks forward to getting more international work experience at Halliburton as his career develops.

Shandra Davidson: from co-op to full-timer at U.S. Steel

Shandra Davidson planned to be a doctor when she entered the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB, Birmingham, AL). After taking a few college-level biology classes, though, “I realized it wasn’t my thing.” Her father, a software engineer, suggested a basic engineering class during her sophomore year and she liked it enough to switch her major to electrical and computer engineering. She earned her BS in 2006.

Davidson co-oped part time in the systems group at U.S. Steel (Fairfield, AL) from January 2005 to August 2006. She worked at the helpdesk, provided IT support to people in the plants who had computer or networking problems, and was involved with a couple of small IT projects.

“My co-op prepared me for my current position by helping me develop leadership skills. I honed my communication skills too, because I was constantly on the phone,” says Davidson.

“I thought I’d find a job in a software engineering company after college,” she says, “but the steel industry is a whole different world. Here everything is automated.” That means lots of interesting software projects.

She started working full time as a project manager at the company in August 2006 after she graduated. Her current responsibilities include developing plant projects, managing budgets, and scheduling workers and contractors. One recent project involved moving operators to a pulpit, a more protected environment. For another, she explored how to extend the life span of motors used during the annealing (curing) process of steel. “They were getting too hot during the process and burning out,” she explains.

Not surprisingly, she is the only woman in the steel plant’s engineering department. In college most of her classmates were men. She recalls how the male students tried to help the few women with lab work until they realized that “We already knew how to do it.”

Davidson’s father has been her main mentor, but she doesn’t hesitate to turn to other family members who are also in technology. As a member of NSBE she frequently goes back to her high school and college to speak with other young black women about pursuing an engineering career.

Her other interest is dance. “I have studied and competed in ballet, pointe, tap, modern and jazz dance for twenty years. I belonged to a ballet company for three years and taught dance for seven. I’m not teaching right now, but I am very involved in a dance ministry at my church and I’ve done some choreography for the UAB Golden Girls Dance Team.

“I want to get an MBA and keep up my knowledge of software engineering and programming. I know that’s important for my career,” says Davidson.

Owens Corning’s Chris Wang improves fiberglass manufacturing

Chris Wang is a manufacturing engineer and plant energy leader at the Santa Clara location of Owens Corning (Toledo, OH), which manufactures insulation. He is responsible for an entire fiberglass manufacturing line; he also works to reduce energy consumption, especially gas and electricity. “For the sustainability of any company, you always have to look at reducing energy,” he says.

As the “process owner” of a manufacturing line, he is responsible for increasing throughput and decreasing scrap. He spends 75 percent of his time on the floor with the operators, watching how they work and focusing on optimization and logistics.

“Optimization cuts down the amount of work that operators have to do by improving the way an area is set up. Logistics applies the same principle to increase efficiency,” Wang explains. “It’s pretty simple, interesting and hands on.”

Wang took his job in April 2005 after graduating from Ohio State University (Columbus, OH) with a BSIE. “I was always good at math and science, so I knew I wanted a technical career. My dad and brother are also engineers. I’m a people person too, so I took that into consideration when I chose my major.”

He began his career in the summer of 2004 as a Six Sigma intern at the Owens Corning Science and Technology Center (Granville, OH). A process that was supposed to take nine months was taking up to two years, so he created an assessment form based on Six Sigma principles and helped map out a timeline for improvement. He also streamlined various work areas.

“The internship gave me insight,” says Wang, who uses the process planning and mapping procedures he learned during his internship every day in his current work. “It made me realize that I wanted to work for Owens Corning and that I was a viable candidate for a manufacturing engineer position.”

Wang started his full-time job in the company’s engineering development program, which lasted a year and included work in all areas of the plant as well as leadership training and mentoring. Today, Wang is a mentor for new engineers in the program, in addition to the operators on his line.

He would like to see his career evolve from a technical focus to an advisory or leadership role where he will have the opportunity to mentor even more people.

Gabriela Valdivia does protection engineering for BPA

Gabriela Valdivia is an EE for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA, Portland, OR). She began at BPA in early 2007 and is based in Vancouver, WA. She works in the protection engineering group, providing engineering support for control and protection system projects. The group is responsible for preventing and troubleshooting relay problems.

Valdivia is involved in a project to replace electromechanical relays with digital at many of the 300 substations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The new digital relays have expanded capabilities and will enable BPA engineers to do more work remotely.

Valdivia interned for three summers at BPA while she was a student at Walla Walla University (College Place, WA). In 2003 she worked in the power system control technical service and got an introduction to the company. In 2004 she was assigned to the laboratories and field testing group, where she did conductivity and circuit breaker tests. For her third summer she interned in the test and energization (T&E) group and worked alongside the engineers checking schematics, point-to-point wire testing and testing alarms.

“My experience as an intern really helped me acclimate to my job. My work in T&E especially helped me understand how everything comes together.”

Valdivia grew up in College Place in eastern Washington. Her interest in math during high school steered her toward an engineering career. She got her BSEE in December 2006 and immediately went to work for BPA.

In college it was a little difficult being one of only four women in her upper-level engineering classes. The university was small and there was not a lot of diversity. Her team at BPA currently includes two women, but she’d like to see even more women enter the power field.

Valdivia is involved with the local Hispanic community and encourages girls to go to college and major in engineering. She also attends college career and recruitment fairs with BPA’s HR representative.

“I’d like to get more experience in engineering, take more power classes, and work with district engineers who set the relays to get a better understanding of how they work,” she says.

Enrique Seara, Jr: Ford manufacturing assembly engineer

Enrique Seara, Jr calls himself a hands-on person. A native of San Antonio, TX, he graduated from Kettering University (Flint, MI) in 2005 with a BSME. During college he alternated school semesters with three-month co-ops at Ford. He says the experience brought him out of his shell. “I was really shy and the program helped me develop socially and become more confident.”

When he graduated Seara was hired full time and is now part of the three-year Ford College Graduate (FCG) rotation program. Seara is in the third year of the program and on his sixth rotation, as a manufacturing assembly engineer. The FCG program, says Seara, has familiarized him with several different areas at the plant and given him practical experience in each one.

As a manufacturing assembly engineer he verifies assembly and test equipment for the company’s 6F-midrange transmission, and develops error-proofing systems to protect against assembly errors. “I work with the employees on the line to keep it running and make sure we’re able to produce good numbers,” says Seara.

He did a previous rotation as a vehicle dynamics/integration engineer on the Ford special vehicles team (SVT) and another as a powertrain operations resident engineer. His responsibilities on the SVT included managing brake fluid tests and supporting performance test trips for the Shelby GT500, managing data acquisition for GT and GT500 testing, developing the 2009 Shelby GT500 vehicle dynamics, and supervising vehicle durability testing for the Shelby GT500 program. As a powertrain operations resident engineer he oversaw stop shipments, a measure that halts the shipment of new cars when a manufacturing defect is found. He also monitored quality issues for engines and transmissions, and administered trials for vehicle quality improvement for the Ford Mustang and Mazda 6 programs.

His next move will be to his permanent position. He’s put in for his top choices and Ford will make its decision based on need. “I’d love to work on the SVT. I did a lot in my position there, and it was a great atmosphere with everyone sharing their passion for the Shelby GT500.”

Seara’s mentors at Ford have guided him through his rotations and helped him make career-related decisions. He appreciates the opportunity to shadow co-workers on the SVT and take advantage of their hands-on approach to learning. “You have to come into a co-op or internship with an open and observant mind in order to make the best of it,” Seara notes.

He is currently working on a masters in ME with an automotive focus at the University of Michigan (Dearborn, MI). He’s aiming to complete the degree in 2009.

“A masters in ME will give me a better knowledge base in the automotive field. I’ll have a better understanding of production and the ways systems work. I plan to use my masters to advance at the company and make valuable contributions here.”

D/C

Laura Gater is a freelance business and medical/ healthcare writer based in northeast Indiana.

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