Experience Matters - Grand Valley State University

David D. Hunting YMCA Aquatics Internship

Hailey
Major: Sport Management While working as the aquatics intern, I was fully in charge of creating the schedules for swim lessons all summer long. I ran the Safety Around Water(SAW) program, and I was the person to go to if anyone had any questions about the SAW program, group swim lessons, and private lessons. I also joined the Lifeguard Competition committee! I have been working hard alongside some higher-ups in our association to create a fun competition for our association's lifeguards to show off their skills to win prizes to take home to their specific branches.

KCON Faculty Profile Intern at GVSU

Melody
Major: Writing My job as an intern was to create profiles for 56 nursing faculty members to go on KCON's website as a replacement for a couple PDFs that listed faculty names with their office locations and contact information.

Yanfeng Automotive Interiors Intern

Ann
Major: Mechanical Engineering For this summer internship I was placed in the Advanced Manufacturing Engineers Department under Dale Boone. My mentor was Laura Snyder and I have been working closely with Joel Timmer on the DJ IP Trim Line that is being sent down to Mexico, 34 machines. For the IP Trim Line, I developed ODS (Operator Description Sheets) for the DJ IP Trim assembly line, assisted in creating a Poka Yoke Matrix for the different sensors on the machines and updated the PFMEA (Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) spreadsheets. I built parts for our different builds, evaluated the control plans and proved out equipment to send to Mexico. I also worked on my own project, proposing to replace our current peel and stick labeling process with a more advanced and efficient laser marking process.

Co-op Semester #1

Connor
Major: Mechanical Engineering At Cascade, I have worked on the floor to become more familiar with the operators and the manufacturing methods as well as worked in the office to learn more about engineering in the real world. I have done maintenance projects on our office's 3D printer, created ergonomically friendly production work cells, and have assisted engineers on molding tryouts on several projects.

Stepping Into The World of Industry

Edward
Major: Electrical Engineering I was able to design and implement a Heijunka Kanban system for our electronics room. It will help the overall flow of the room and over time help increase the capacity of the room as WIP (Work In Progress) is reduced.

Quality and Machine work at Helix Steel

Andrew
Major: Mechanical Engineering Wrote quality reports which took different tests regarding overall product strength and dimensions for both new and finished product. Also worked and performed maintenance on machines that ran our 8 mm wire. Helped start a new chute design project designed to reduce floor scrap, saving time and money.

Foundation- Rotation I

Taylor
Major: Electrical Engineering During my time at Gentex, I was able to work directly on the production floor as a part of a glass fabrication team. Some of my daily responsibilities consisted of servicing quality alarms, helping lead a team, and troubleshooting various issues. I was a member of a team focused on finding the root cause and permanent fix of a quality defect in our product. This consisted of extensive isolation testing, data management, and creating an innovative solution. Throughout my first co-op semester I was also involved in many small continuous improvement projects.

Co-Op 1 Summer 2018

Chad
Major: Mechanical Engineering The team that I was officially on was the innovation team. This meant that we focused on ways to improve what was going on in house, that could mean helping improve quality, helping improve how machines run and taking employee suggestions on how to make things around the shop better. This semester I designed a couple of carts that will hold the waste from the paint line when parts are powder coated. This barrel can come close to 500 lbs. before the barrel needs to be emptied. Another project that I worked on was a system that would use a PLC to open a lid to one-inch container when the parts in the anywhere are to be used.

Steelcase - Engineering Co-op Rotation 01

Zachary
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering Working with the manufacturing engineers at the Steelcase Kentwood plant, my projects ranged from helping implement new products into the plant to doing projects that helped support existing product lines. A good portion of my work was designing racks/fixtures on AutoCAD. These projects included speaking to the operators to get suggestions, working with suppliers to get the fixtures built, and getting the fixtures calibrated to ensure that they would keep parts within tolerance. In addition to that, I helped support other engineers with various other projects which exposed me to the different roles within the department. These projects included laying out production lines, compiling data to justify projects, studying processes and suggesting changes to make the processes more efficient.

First Co Op Rotation

Natalia
Major: Mechanical Engineering I worked on projects ranging from labeling tools, to assembling an electrical plug, to designing supports using CAD software. I also had the responsibility of keeping the work area clean and organized.

Summer 2018 Co-Op

Samantha
Major: Interdisciplinary Engineering I worked directly with a few companies helping them optimize the design of their products so we could put them into production. Since I was aware of what Rose Medical could offer, I would help shape the design around what we were able to produce and then I would help design the machines that produced the parts. I worked directly with many different prototypes but I also worked a lot with improving processes to decrease the time it takes to make a part in production. I spent a lot of time learning how to write technical reports and becoming much better at CAD. Every day was different and we were allowed to work independently even as interns. It was a lot of hands-on problem solving.

My Time at Dolphin Research Center

Jamie
Major: Biology As a research intern, I worked with the small staff of the research department directly. On a day to day basis, I was in charge of completing observations on dolphins participating in a respiration rate study and a lateralization study. I also had the chance to assist with larger research projects that are yet to be published, play "thinking games" with the dolphins, input data into the database, and spend the day with guests participating in the research programs offered. I worked to complete a journal, a personal goal, and a scientific goal during my three month internship on top of the forty hours a week I worked.

Hometown Gazette Newspaper Internship

Hannah
Major: Writing During my internship I was responsible for writing articles, taking photographs of local and nearby town events, and interviewing individuals about accomplishments or events. I also had the responsibility of managing ad sales, from customers coming in to pay for their ads, to me calling businesses to ask them if they'd like to repurchase/purchase ads.

Sports Intern at Spartan Stores YMCA

Joslyn
Major: Sport Management I completed a wide variety of tasks as the sports intern. The majority of tasks I completed were administrative, which included projects such as a competitive analysis and being sure all sports classes were prepared for and running smoothly. I also oversaw the summer T-ball/baseball league, and taught many different sports classes.

Internship

derrick
Major: Political Science I assisted duties such as, data entry, field operations, (which include cutting turf and knocking doors), and helping on fundraisers.

Santiago Internship

Stephanie
Major: International Relations While at Chile Transparente I conducted a research project on how female participation can help lower the level of corruption in government. The focus was on how my research could help in implementing a more women in politics.

1st Co-op rotation at Gill Industries

Leif
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering As a first rotation co-op at Gill, I had several different opportunities and responsibilities. With how Gill outlines their co-op experience, the first rotation is focused on exposing students to several different departments in order to understand every step of the manufacturing process from design to finished good. I began my semester working as a machine operator. Additionally, I developed operator work instructions and startup/shutdown instructions and posted them on new machines. In the manufacturing engineering department, I completed time studies on existing lines and came up with ways to improve efficiency and minimize unscheduled downtime.

Controls Design Work at Koops, Inc

Ryan
Major: Computer Engineering During the first week of my co-op, I did training in AutoCAD Electrical to become familiar with the tool and the format of the electrical prints at Koops. During the next few weeks I did updates for existing prints to get introduced to many of our components and common circuits. Next, I was given more responsibility and began attending project meetings and taking notes alongside my mentor, Nate, who is a GVSU Engineering graduate. Towards the middle of the semester Nate began giving me more control over the jobs I was working on and I began being the sole voice in meetings/conferences, communicating with customers and other engineers, and getting items quoted through our vendors. By the last month of my semester I was running several small and medium sized jobs with the circuit design, component selection/ordering, and meetings being ran by me with Nate supervising and ready to answer any questions I had.

Innovation

Connor
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering I helped develop a specification for a powerfold for a company.

HBPW - Municipal Service Provider

Chad
Major: Computer Engineering This semester I have been working on both the internal network for servers, employees, VoIP, etc. and the external network for customers. I have worked with partner ISPs to troubleshoot network issues and with customers as well. On the internal network, I have continued on a previous project for a redundant network server farm and I have start new projects with internet edge routing.

West Michigan Ironmen

Jared
Major: Sport Management I handled player intake, preparation for games as well as production of the game.

Legacy Intern

Christian
Major: Sport Management I helped operate all events. This includes setting up and tearing down, making sure the refs are getting paid, and keeping parents and players happy throughout the process. I also worked the front desk a lot where I would register teams for leagues, register individuals, take payments, and explain the schedule to people who were trying to find their way.

Intern

Dae'Shaun
Major: Sport Management I work directly with the sports based programs that a two clients were working on bringing to the city of Detroit. For one, I helped with the creation and development of her programs to help center it more sport based and the other I helped her with her business focus and all the business operations that go into her organizations like the name and branding.

Fitness Intern

Nikki
Major: Sport Management Assisting with the organization and promotion of all fitness and sports programs. Assist with the new member program including instructing in the use of all equipment to a safe and effective manner when requested. Communicating with new and prospective members of the club about scheduling tours, game plans, training sessions, promotions of the month, and memberships.

Engineering Co-Op

Jackson
Major: Product Design and Manufacturing Engineering I wrote software for industrial applications using Python, Visual Basic, and HTML. I also performed mechanical design, circuit analysis, and statistical process control among numerous other things.