|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Summer pops for UPOP interns by Lauren Clark
August 18, 2006 "Real world" summer internships help MIT undergraduates plan their careers and think like leaders. There are summer internships. And then there are UPOP summer internships. MIT's Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program helps place students in challenging, interesting positions that offer a taste of what it's like to practice their skills in a chosen field – before they've even entered their junior year of college. Testing composite-material baseball bats, improving an angioplasty kit used by doctors worldwide, and analyzing a new type of emissions filter on a Piaggio scooter are just a few of the projects that sophomores participating in UPOP have tackled this summer. Just as the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) allows undergraduates to participate in real, cutting-edge academic research, UPOP introduces students to the "real world" of engineering practice and helps them start planning their careers. "Since MIT students work so hard in their classes and labs, it's easy for them to think 'I'll wait until I graduate to worry about my career,'" said UPOP director Chris Resto (SB '99), "UPOP helps them lift their heads above the daily grind of problem sets and grades to see their classes not as ends in themselves, but as a means to achieving career goals," he said. The program is open to all MIT sophomores. The summer internships are the culmination of a semester-long series of activities that coach students in the myriad facets of working in an organization. UPOP helped Mike Vasquez realize that when an opportunity that suits your interests doesn't exist, you can create one. A materials science and engineering major and self-described "baseball nut" – he pitches for MIT's varsity baseball team – Vasquez is considering a career in sports engineering. He wanted to do his internship at a sports equipment company, but no such position existed among UPOP's job listings. So he convinced one of the industry's leading firms, Easton Sports of Van Nuys, CA, to create an internship for him on a team of engineers designing bats out of composite materials. Naturally, the bats need testing, and Vasquez is always happy to step into Easton's batting cage. UPOP guided Vasquez through the steps of securing his internship, such as selecting appropriate companies and reaching out to them via a professional-sounding email or phone call. Approaching employers "isn't rocket science," said Vasquez, "but there were nuances to the process that [a student] just wouldn't know without professional experience." Before applying for her internship at Johnson & Johnson's Cordis Corporation, a medical device company specializing in cardiovascular disease, Mona Daniels had "no idea there were so many medical device companies." The job search opened her eyes to unexpected opportunities for a mechanical engineer in the medical device field. Daniels is testing upgrades to a catheterization kit with which doctors perform angioplasty (inflating a narrowed blood vessel using a balloon) by inserting a catheter through the wrist rather than through the groin. The wrist-insertion method reduces bleeding and recovery time for the patient and is more cost-efficient.
At Cordis' Miami headquarters, Mona works in a small team, which she says has been valuable. It has allowed her to see the whole process of developing a product, from manufacturing to testing to marketing, as well as provided a glimpse of the "big decision making" in developing and selling a product, she said. "That's a lot of what we get in UPOP." She added that the program instilled in her a "well-roundedness" and "level of seriousness" that enabled her to keep up with her team's fast pace and high expectations of her work. The Woburn, MA-based startup GEO2 Technologies, which develops new materials for emissions control, was a natural fit for UPOP interns Vladimir Gordievsky and Tolga Yazicioglu, both mechanical engineering majors and members of the MIT Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) team. One of their projects involved mounting a prototype filter onto a Piaggio scooter (scooters run on notoriously polluting two-stroke engines) and testing its emissions-reducing performance after excursions around town. Another project required them to build from scratch an automatic washing machine for the dies used to produce GEO2's filters. Gordievsky and Yazicioglu were pleasantly surprised by the independence they were given to pursue their work. From day one, said Yazicioglu, "it was ready, set, go." With independence, however, comes an expectation of responsibility and professionalism. Before building their die washer, for instance, they had to present a cost-benefit analysis to the CEO. Gordievsky said that the internship not only saved him from working at his usual summer job as a bank security officer, but that "you really start thinking about [your career] when you're on the job. It opens up your eyes to future jobs or other opportunities, like getting a master's."
It's not only MIT students who benefit from UPOP internships, but the organizations that hire them. The program's employers, which have grown from 60 in 2001 to 170 at present, pay their interns a living wage. In return, they get a valuable combination of the technical excellence for which MIT students are known and the business acumen that comes from participating in UPOP. GEO2 Technologies Vice President Bilal Zuberi said that Gordievsky and Yazicioglu, in addition to taking charge of their own projects and advising on others, have "far exceeded the expectations of the executive team in their business savvy. We were investigating a market opportunity, and I asked them to learn about the market size and competitive environment of a company that had recently filed for an IPO [initial public offering]. Within a few hours, I had a snapshot of the company on my desk, including its IPO filing documents, along with a note that Tolga and Vladimir had messages in to some key players in the industry to gather additional information." UPOP recognizes that "MIT students have initiative and drive to begin with," Resto said. It's not that they're going to need help securing a good job. Rather, the program gives students "professional confidence" to navigate their careers and the complex world of practice. In this way, UPOP pursues a higher aim of educating students to be leaders in their fields. Prior to their internships, UPOP students participate in a week-long corporate training seminar, networking and mentoring sessions, mock interviews, and other activities that expose them to different aspects of working in an organization (be it a corporation, a startup, or a government agency): application of technical skills, product development and commercialization, organizational dynamics, leadership and teamwork, character and ethics, and effective communication. The internships allow the students to experience these aspects of practice first-hand. Enrollment in UPOP has grown from 73 students in 2001, when the program was established, to 250 today. Currently, roughly one in four MIT sophomores and about 40 percent of engineering sophomores participate. UPOP is administered by the MIT School of Engineering.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
