With the summer coming to a close, students prepare to return to school and reflect on their summers. While some students have taken advantage of some very nice rest and relaxation, others have really spent their summers with some incredible opportunities in incredible places to enhance their educations and future career options.
Junior mechanical engineering major Julia Alspaugh spent her second summer in a row working at Michelin in Greensboro, S.C. In addition to getting to live in and experience a new city, she's gained valuable work experience.
"I worked in one of the tire plants doing designing modifications that will help improve production quality and speed," Alspaugh said. "I actually put the engineering skills I've learned to use in the real world. I still don't know what I want to do after college, but having a summer job has helped me figure out what some of my options are."
With the economy and job market struggling, summer internships really help Virginia Tech students to get their collective foot in the door.
While some students focused on valuable work experience, others have narrowed in on research opportunities. The National Science Foundation sponsors several research projects around the country to support undergraduates for the summer in the Research Experience for Undergraduates program.
According to the NSF's Web site, "The REU program supports active research participation by undergraduate students."
Junior civil engineering major Elaine Huffman participated in an REU this summer at The University of Notre Dame. The focus of the project was to analyze structures, water systems and geologic conditions following natural disasters. Huffman's project was to research the structural integrity of schools in natural disasters.
"Not only did I get valuable research experience, but I got to study something that is important," Huffman said.
The group at the Notre Dame site is currently doing field work in Thailand and Indonesia as a part of its experience.
"Getting to see firsthand the effects of the tsunami has really put the research into perspective. It has been an awesome experience," Huffman said.
Mallory Brangan also participated in an NSF funded REU. As a junior biochemistry major, she is interested in infectious disease, and her study took place at Indiana University-Bloomington.
"For 10 weeks, I worked in an actual lab, doing actual science. It was awesome," Brangan said. "We fluorescently localized a putative peptidoglycan hydrolase protein in the gram positive bacteria Streptococcus pneumonia," Brangan explained.
For those of us who have no idea what that means, she clarified: "I fused a protein that glows to a protein that we think might maintain the cell wall. If successful, which we don't know yet, the location of the protein of interest will be seen with a fluorescent microscope at different stages in cellular division."
Brangan found her experience very rewarding. When she finishes at Tech, she hopes to continue her studies in biochemistry.
"I really love science and studying disease. I would not trade my experience this summer for anything," Brangan said.
If you aren't already impressed with what Virginia Tech students are doing with their summers, you need to meet senior Alek Duerksoe. Duerksen has majors in mining and minerals engineering with minors in creative writing and geology. He spent his summer getting work experience for a company that makes mining equipment in Chile as a part of a scholarship.
Duerksen was very deliberate about his choice to study in Chile.
"As a single country, Chile is the most important nation for P&H in terms of shovels sold and services performed. They also have the most advanced and developed techniques for optimizing shovel maintenance," Duerksen said.
His work saw him coming up with and executing his entire project himself, in Spanish no less.
"What it makes it so cool is that I didn't get stuck doing something boring like time studies or typing values into spreadsheets - I was able to independently develop a project that has the potential to be applied at a global level," Duerksen said. "It has been an incredible work experience, both in terms of practicality for job placement and in personal development as a mining engineer. It has far exceeded my expectations of what a summer job could be, and I know that it is an experience that has been nothing but beneficial and that I will remember for years to come."
Senior art major Jessica Harllee is hitting the road to learn some new and exciting things for her summer. She will be traveling to California to a showcase on time-lapse photography. She has been helping her friend with his project over the last eight months.
"The project uses a motion control camera to document Charlie as he loses weight over a period of time," said Harllee. "He's going to create interactive animations from the footage that can be viewed in a gallery setting or online. This allows him to visualize his weight loss instead of relying on numbers."
Many important companies such as Pixar, Autodesk and ILM will be at the showcase. In addition to showcasing her work and helping her friend, Harllee hopes to make some valuable contacts.
"It will give me the opportunity to see what's going on in the industry right now, what's coming up and maybe even make some contacts," Harllee said.
Finally, senior mechanical engineering major Alex Navin showed that one need not leave Blacksburg to make a real impact. He has done research in both film cooling effectiveness and gas turbine blade analysis.
His group has been working to design new film cooling holes for the vanes and blades in gas turbine engines. These are important for cooling functions in engines.
"For this I have actually designed and built a test rig to test 100X scale models of film cooling holes," Navin said. His work will ultimately help out some graduate students with their theses.