Internships and Co-Ops Panel

Now I have that half day like.

I want to make sure that.

And I'm going to wait a little bit and join us here at the moment.

Talking all kinds of folk story.

How many do we have?

Right now we have 17 participants. We had 68. C will give a little more time.

For everyone already joined us.

I give everyone just one moment to come in and join in.

Susan, you're muted.

Thank you, thank you everyone for joining us today. I was asking more technical question so this is our internship and Cox cable and I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit.

Intraductal sorry I've got today. I want to 1st make sure everyone can make sure it's so if you go over to your chat can you let me know if you can hear me? If you have students listening in or perspective.

Oh hi, I can't be auto keeping up. OK let me try something else.

I have no idea if anyone can hear me. I'm hoping at least the three of you can hear me and hopefully other people that are watching us can hear us.

We're having some technical difficulties, so just give us a minute. I'm assuming other people can. I have no idea if other people can hear this right now.

If you can, there's a chat function, so maybe try OK.

That's better.

What's better?

Porreco

Karako

your echo is gone I think.

your ankles gone I think.

Get it.

Hi.

OK, can everyone hear Mary OK? I'm also watching the chat.

Thank you, Eric, Ben Shapiro and Jimmy for keeping us updated on what you can hear. OK, my name is Dixie. I'm from Grand Junction Cholera and I'm a fourth year civil engineering major.

I have

Suzan, can I just switch to the chat? It's something's going wrong.

OK, yes.

I'm sorry.

OK, I can pick up then while she's doing the chat.

My name's Anna Kate. I'm a second year bio medical, an chemical and biological engineering major. Here I'm from right here in Fort Collins.

Yep.

Hi, my name is Nick. I am from Lakewood, Co and I'm a fourth year computer engineering major.

Hi there, cross my fingers. You guys can hear me. My name is Peter Lawrason. I'm a fifth year studying mechanical and biomedical engineering and biological math and I'm as before coming to Colorado's in Dallas. Or if you use.

And I don't know Dixie would try chat.

Are you trying to?

OK.

Well, what I think we're going to try to do is come back to my statement here. Have them tell you where they do their internship and their car.

And also tells why they chose CSP.

And weather saying well we tried with you technical difficulties for Dixie.

OK, so like I said my name is Emma key and I have grown up in Northern Colorado my whole life. I lived in Windsor which is right by Fort Collins for a little bit before coming to Fort Collins and growing up. I wanted to go out of state for college. I did not even consider in state for a little bit and then.

It was actually my parents that one day signed me up her to her for CSU because I had been touring all these different schools across the country and just nothing felt right and they thought that with the school being so close to us that I at least had to try it. And the second I got on campus, I absolutely loved it. I that was the first time that I had felt at home at a campus. Ann, I just truly knew right then that CSU was going to be a really good place for me and I actually ended up going to an engineering exploration day when it was still in person.

And getting to see all the different programs. That's how I found out about the dual degree program here, which is what I'm currently in. Breyer allowed to do biomedical engineering as a major as well as a partner major.

And I chose chemical and biological engineering as my partner major.

And that's been a big reason why I have stayed at CSU. I really like the program that I'm able to do my chemical engineering classes as well as that bio medical side and very early on in my first semester at CSU, I was in doctor Mark Brown's seminar and that's how I found out about his lab. So Claire Lavelle is one of the great chemical engineering advisors here, and she sent out a whole bunch of information on different research in labs that professors were doing.

And I saw that my professor had his information.

And was able to email him and ask if I could talk about his love with him one day and I went up after class and he basically offered me the position that day. So I've been working in his lab for about a year now and it's a small molecule enzyme inhibitor lab in my group. Specifically works on Smid too, which is a cancer causing gene. So what we get to do is look for all the different targets at the different binding sites of how we can selectively.

Inhibit that protein, in theory to hopefully reduce the impact of Smad 2 on the body because it does allow tumor formation, so that's also been a big reason why I've stayed. I've loved all the research I've been able to do, and all the hands on experience, but I get to do here and then I will pass up to neck.

Perfect thanks.

Yes, I ended up choosing CSU ultimately due to a scholarship. So CSU was was actually not on my radar at 1st until I visited campus and it quickly rose to one of my top two options and it was pretty close call between the two.

I've actually been fortunate enough to be part of what's called the Scott scholars and the Scott Scholars, a scholarship program that's offered through the college that first year freshman get to apply to an that made a huge difference in my decision plot hands-on stuff we gotta do. We gotta go to Omaha to visit the benefactor, Walter Scott, Junior, from the scholarship. So that really made my decision to come to CSU easy.

In terms of why I've stayed at CSU.

Few things I would I would say I've had incredible luck with. You know my classes in my major. I think I've had great professors. I really have not had a bad experience in my college career on that front, which has been really good. I'm Additionally I think it's extracurriculars have gotten involved with involved in fraternities were already Life, which is been really good for me.

That's kind of kept me to CSU because it's my friend groups. It's all my activities outside of school, which I'm really kept me here.

In terms of my internship experience, I have interned for last four summers at company called Leprino Foods Leprino Foods. It's a big mozzarella cheese manufacturer, so if you think like Domino's Pizza Hut, all the cheese on those pizzas, Leprino Foods. Leprino Foods actually makes.

What are in terms of what I've done there? I've seen a little bit of everything I've done a lot of controls engineering which is controlling like the automation behind the manufacturing process, so that's been very, very interesting for me. This last summer I was actually had a remote internship and I was working on more process engineering where I was looking at different flow rates from different tanks.

And I think that the key to the experience and internships is you're getting that real world experience, and that's really helped me and I know I'm sure we'll talk about it throughout the throughout the panel a little more and I'll pass it off to Peter now.

Great thanks Nick. I'm so good yeah.

OK, so I spent my middle school and high school years in Texas and when I started looking for schools I knew I wanted to get out of state. Originally from up North and I, you know, like the idea of being up North. I originally thought I want to be a doctor, but I didn't want to study chemistry or biology and then kind of, you know, not to say that your options are limited. If you study one of those. But for me I didn't see myself going into career of chemistry or biology so.

I was looking at different stem programs and the dual program really caught my eye because I've always liked mechanical things. You know, I always liked Legos and tinkering with things as a kid and then the bio Med dual program really exposes you to a lot of that biology and chemistry as well. And you know you still have that door open to go to the Med school if so desired. So I came up here. I visited for cons and I absolutely fell in love with it. I did a lot of these activities and talk to a different.

Bunch of different people in the college and fell in love with it, so that's kind of how I ended up here and ever sense of absolutely loved it. Fort Collins is a phenomenal place. The School of Biomedical Engineering in the College of engineering are two. Absolutely phenomenal.

And so in my first couple of years, I spent did a couple different lab positions on campus. Kind of more academic research type positions, and I realized that I was definitely more interested in being an industry than academic research, and so there is. And there's a lady who's no longer with the college named.

Why am I blanking on her name?

She was. She was the one who kind of started all of the Co OPS and was in charge of all of that and so she had, you know, kind of.

Told me a lot about doing a Co op and at the time there weren't many Terry. Thank you Terry Commerford. At the time there weren't many students have been doing Co OPS and the idea of taking a semester off of college kind of break up that five year program and get some real world work experience on really enticing to me. So in one of the rounds of career fairs and the activities surrounding the career fair, so there's like an evening with industry event. I talked to a handful of different companies that were looking to.

Hire a student for a.

On a more like a longer term basis and not just a three month summer internship so Long story short, I ended up doing at 8 month work term full-time with Becton Dickinson doing in their research and Development Department, and so that ended. I came back to school and so now I'm currently a full time student and I'm doing an internship with another company and then in January I will go back to full time work and I'll have to make a decision of which company I want to go back to. So hopefully that's kind of A.

Decent overview of my experi.

And maybe we can try Dixie again. I see every joint and hopefully can everyone hear me.

With no echo this time, who will get there?

Dixie, let's try you.

Hello.

OK Hi everybody, my name is Dixie.

Don't know how much you could understand from the first time around, but I'm full Grand Junction Co. I'm a fourth year civil engineering major. I have a primary interest in water resources. I've also picked up the sustainable water. Mine are similar to Nick. I also chose CSU because of the Scott Scholars Program due to that scholarship program I've been able to have a lot more freedom on choosing where I work and when I can apply for things I've been fortunate to have three different types of internships.

My first one was at a private consulting firm named SG M. There they specifically told me they wanted me to be exposed to as many things as possible that ranged from creating a bid sheet based off of past projects to actually doing a construction site visit where I got to watch critters be put in place.

My next internship I interned at a public water municipality called Clifton Water District that was pretty cool because it was in my hometown. I got to help out with actually processing 20 years of hard files from the field specifically for use in the GIS model that they were going to use for optimizing their Poly replacement program. If I say any jargon, by the way, that you want clarified, please put them in the chat. I'll be happy to.

Try and go into that and then. Right now I'm actually a research intern at the Colorado stormwater center here at CSU, so I think one of the best ways to sum it up is I sampled stormwater. So during our September snowstorm it was really cool because in the samples that I was actually preparing I could see ash from the nearby fire in our samples that were sending off to the lab.

I would say it's a lot of fun wherever you end up or wherever you go. It also helps if you always ask questions when you don't know something.

So.

Excellent advice Dixie. OK, so now that hopefully you've all heard the introductions of these wonderful students. They have background in everything from cheese on Domino's Pizza to Cancer Research.

So and everything in between. What I'd like to do is to have all of you ask questions of our panelists. All of you's perspective students, it appears, supposed to be have already learned to use the chat as you gave us feedback on our technical difficulties, unfortunately, and I'm going to go ahead and leave this slide up just so you can see the names of the panelists. And if you have questions for specific panels, that's great. And if you have generic questions as well for any of them, you don't have to specify a name or anything.

So I'm going to wait to give you all just a minute to type questions you might have in the chat.

And it's not. They don't know that I have a couple of questions for them too.

So I have the first one that says are internships, usually paid or unpaid.

So see Dixie raising your hand once you go ahead.

So I have heard of unpaid internships. I've been fortunate in all of my internships are paid.

And that's usually a good thing to bring up to when you're first learning about an internship is not only asking if you'll get paid a wage, but also what benefits you might get from an internship. For example, I had an internship. Not only did it anyways, but they also pay for all the expenses for me to attend the annual Water Conference Denver 2 summers ago.

Any other input?

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, to add on at all of the positions that I've held have been paid and kind of same same boat as Dixie. Like I in the Biomedical Engineering Society and last year there is the National Conference in Philadelphia and my work actually paid for my flights and hotel costs to go attend that conference so.

From my experience, definitely paid.

Great thank you both.

I mean, any other questions. Definitely type them in the chat and I'll give everyone a moment or two.

So we have our next one from Jackson. Are there opportunities for robotics or robotics engineering internships?

Anyone knows the answer to that? Otherwise I can jump.

Adminis

And I know CSU does have a partnership with Wolf Robotics here in town, and so they often sponsor a senior project and often do hire interns. And there are many others as well. So I agree with that.

100%.

100% this next question is why internship programs are worth the investment and I'll hand it over to any of you who would like to answer that one.

I can start, so I've been varied again. I've been very fortunate, at least with the people I've worked with, but one of the major things for me is that you can.

You get to see the people side in the actual industry that goes into projects and also you can make really valuable connections. So for example the internship I had from the summer between my first and second year, I still get emails every semester asking me if I want to come back or if I know if I'm graduating or where I'm going to go to grad school so you can make really important connections, and there's kind of a security in knowing that there's someone somewhere.

Who can vouch for some work you did? You know even as even with just your first year of introductory classes under your belt.

So it's just. Yeah, I'd definitely say those connections you make and the exposure you get to the industry. Those are the primary things that make investing time in an internship worth it.

I'll add that another, I think. Another really important part about internships is it kind of you gain that exposure to industry before graduation and you can kind of get an idea of like what you might be looking for in a job. So for instance, you know some people do better at a much larger company. Some people do better at, you know smaller startup me myself like in my coop. I did a lot of verification and validation activities for medical device. So things kind of pertaining to FDA submissions and Whatnot. And then I also.

Was able to kind of get my hands dirty with new product development and then my current my current internship. I'm doing a lot of coding in Matlab and dealing with large datasets and I never would have thought this, but I'm actually really enjoying myself and so I'm I think I'm slowly kind of learning about myself that I'm you know, potentially little more interested in the data side of things and kind of programming and doing these bulk analysis.

And then paid to write like what's not to love about getting paid generally. And so if you it's a great way to fill a summer. You know instead of working at nothing wrong about working at Papa John's actually worked at Papa John's a summer before I got my internship and you can get paid at Papa John's or you can you know gain this experience. Generally getting paid more than you would at a pizza place or what not.

Now when I ask a question that I do want all four of you to go down the line and answer, I'd like you to tell everyone how did you find your particular internship as I'm going to start with the order on my screen, I'm going to have it go first. When Nick is done, then Peter that Emma, Kate, then Dixie. So think if you'll start in turn, how did you find your?

Yeah, so I actually have a family friend who works at Luppino Food and so that kind of got me in the door and so I think you definitely have to utilize connections that you have. That being said, I think I can transition to a little bit better on the career fair is an excellent place. I was fortunate enough to have that connection, but not everyone will, so the career fair. There's tons and tons of internships that hundreds of employers are coming to each semester.

Offering and so I would say that's a good place. I personally found mine through it. A family friend though.

Peter, do you want to tell us how you found your internship?

Internship. Oh yeah, so I didn't realize those next, so for my Co op, I once again Terry Commerford. I've been talking to her and she had kind of pointed me in the direction of a few companies that she knew were looking for more of a longer term intern as opposed to just like a three month summer intern. And so she had pointing in the direction of a few different companies and same as Nick, I talked to them at the career fair and then actually the night before the career fair I talked to them at an evening with industry event which the Society of women engineers puts on every year, which is a phenomenal event. And so I kind of.

Introduce myself to these recruiters and kind of.

You know, introduce myself and made my name kind of known, and then the next day I followed up at the career fair and then from there it was just that's kind of how it went. From there we got interviews and then for the other one we actually in the Biomedical Engineering Society. We had a industry member come and speak at one of our general meetings and kind of give a presentation. And when my.

OK, so I spoke up or spoke on this a little bit in my introduction, but I saw this lab opportunity through an email from Claire and she sends out lots of great information and different opportunities to get involved.

So I was just really drawn to it so it is a small molecule and so I'm gonna have her lab and I personally knew I like them or bio medical, but I thought it would be a good way to get my foot in the door and so after class one day I went up and had that conversation with him, express my interest and oncology and that type of research and he right away said there's a spot for you. We can do it. We can even put you on a team that you can work on more of those cancer related genes and I was not expecting that at all. I was definitely expecting.

But they would only accept third and fourth years at at the time as a first year I'd been at CSU for about a month at that time, so I would definitely say don't be scared to go up to your professor and ask. Or even if you don't have the cost of them.

To look at their research, there's a lot of great resources on the CDC website where it'll show you each of their professors, different interests and research that they are currently conducting, and emailing them are going up to them in person.

I guess that would probably be a zoom call is a great way to be able to get your foot in the door and get on to an internship or loud really early on.

OK, so my first internship. It was through a personal connection and then the consulting company actually actively sent me to the public municipality that I worked at and then my current research job. One of my classmates was talking about how he had to Weld weird boxes for storm water research and I tagged along because I thought it was fun and next thing I know I'm putting in a lot of hours over the weekend, learning how to use it.

Plasma cutter and how to tig Weld for the first time?

And then the supervisor of the storm water Research Center wanted to meet me in person and asked me if I wanted to get paid for all the work I was doing. So you again connections, connections, connections. I realize that face to face connections are a lot harder to make. Now you you're not necessarily going to be within a business card handing out distance anymore if you bump into somebody at the store, but if possible, like even just drop by the career fair and say hi to people.

People still do talk a lot, especially recruiters, so that's my tip for that.

Great thank you all. So if I was to summarize, there are so many ways to find jobs. And at CSU you'll have our internships and Co OPS there. Should saying that will eventually extended jobs too, but we have all kinds of great resources. I know that Kaylee put in the chat. We have an engineering success center you will meet with folks like Peter who met with our Co op coordinator. There we do host the career fairs that they can mentioned, right? So we have those every fall and every spring. And so you also have list of professors like Emma. Kate said she reached out to the Professor.

And don't be afraid to do that even starting your freshman year, no matter where all of you end up going to school. I know all of you listen here. Still trying to make your choices and no matter where you end up, definitely don't be afraid to reach out to your professors. And then *** **** he said. Definitely do networking as well and you'll find lots of people who are definitely willing to connect you to potential opportunities.

So I want to go back now to the questions in the chat. This person for Destiny says why did you pick your major Nick?

Yeah, so I landed on computer engineering because my junior and Senior High School I had exposure to like AP computer science and computer graphics class I did in my high school so I found software super interesting and so I went to apply it just kind of down between computer science and computer engineering. The reason I landed on Computer Engineering is I think the engineering title for one in my mind is a little bit more marketable.

As well as you know, Computer Engineering is really getting down into like how the computers work from a hardware perspective, which is something I didn't really know a ton about, whereas I I did have a little bit of experience in software and so I kind of wanted to reach out and learn a little more and broaden, broaden my knowledge and so I wouldn't computer engineering.

Great, thank you next question. Here is how much do companies expect you to know when applying for an internship? How much do you really need to know beforehand that can be intimidating?

I love this question.

I love this question. Wait Peter, do you want to go first or OK so?

One of the first thing so one of the things that you should always remember, especially when you go to interview or your first talking to a potential employer is admit how much you know and how much you don't know. And my first internship actually one of one our senior or manager for the office came up and told me Dixie. You just finished freshman year. No one expects you to know everything. Make sure to ask questions and that's been a kind of a guiding philosophy since then.

And also when you like even just a little exposure to AutoCAD, that's good to put on a resume. But when you get the chance to talk, just keep in mind that there is a difference between classwork, like learning how to draw a cross section of a channel, which is like just a simple trapezoid, and there's a difference between using AutoCAD to actually check for serving accuracy. So just keep that in mind, but you will start to build up those skills that you'll need to learn how to do practices in the industry.

So to add on that, keep keep saying You know in in any of these engineering programs. In my opinion, basically what we're learning to do is we're learning how to problem solve. Then we're also learning how to learn and how to process information, and so really when you get to your first internship or any internship, you're going to learn everything they need you to do on the job. It's not like you're going to get to an internship, and they're going to expect you to Remember Remember all of your.

Fundamentals of heat and mass transfer. They want to know that you have been exposed to that and so you know when they start talking about it. You can kind of understand what they're saying, but ultimately what you're learning is how to learn how to process information and how to solve problems. And so once you do get that internship, they're going to teach you everything that you need to know. And it's not like in college or, you know, in these courses where you have an exam, and especially before the pandemic, you know you had to go and you didn't have any resources. Well, you get to a job and.

Google's right in front of you, right? You can look up whatever you need to do. Your employer doesn't really care.

How like how do I phrase this? You know your employer doesn't care if whether or not you have to Google Something, as long as you can get it done, so hopefully that's helpful.

At all, I'll echo definitely what dixien Peter said. I worked 30 years at Hewlett-Packard and we hired interns definitely as they both said you. You need to. You've learned in engineering school how to solve problems. You have that ability. Now let's put that to work and it's going to be a specific problem. Why you've never heard of? So yes, you've gotta learn all about it. So definitely don't be intimidated by wow, I don't really fully understand why what this company does, you're going. You're going to learn about that.

This next question, I think, is going to be a good one for you, Peter. It says. How do you accommodate the carpentry causing a break your education in terms of classes that build on each other over subsequent years? I'm just going to Start Stop, start off, excuse me by saying for those internships usually you don't need that. Breaking your education internships usually summer and then if they do continue during the school year, many employers will say, well, yeah you can work just like 10 to 15 hours a week and they'll work it around your school schedule. Co OPS are a different story though and I.

Definitely Peter comment.

Yeah, that's a great question and honestly a lot of it has to do with kind of a case by case basis.

It's very possible there's a bunch of different ways to do it. I could have taken a full year off of school, two consecutive coop terms, or the way I did it was I did one and two the end of 2019 and then all of 2020. I'm in school and then the start of January. I go back to working, but what I'll say is the College of engineering has some of the most phenomenal advisors and their eager to help you succeed. And you know, help you move classes around as you need to.

To make sure that you can still graduate, you know on time, given the when I say on time you're going to. In my case I delay my graduation by a year, but I wouldn't want to delay it anymore than a year. And so the advisors are phenomenal and working with me and making sure that I still do it in six years.

So it's it's really a case by case basis. There are some semesters where it's easier to take off in others, and there are some kind of work arounds that you have to do to you know for that you know some courses you have to take after another course, but I haven't had too much trouble really whatsoever, so it's a pretty smooth process, surprisingly so.

Very good thank you Peter and Peter. Head on something really cute too if you want to do a coop, definitely talk with your advisor about it. The sooner the better. And again this would apply to CSU or any institution that you decide to go to. Definitely partner with your advisor on that.

Let's see the next question that we had here to scroll back up. Do you recommend doing internships earlier on in your in your education? Excuse me or later in case you don't want to pursue that degree.

I want to take that one.

Yeah, I can speak and I would, I would say.

Do internships as often as you can. Ultimately it's an internship is building up your your toolkit if you will, on things you know and experience you have. That will make you ultimately more marketable following graduation. And so you you mentioned specifically deciding whether you want to pursue that degree.

Take an internship early on in your degree program would be great for that case, but I also think you know you should do an internship as often as you can as often as you get the opportunity to.

Yeah, I can speak on this a little bit too. I'm still super early on in my career, obviously, but I've really enjoyed being it on it super early.

I'm in the position now where I'm starting to apply for my second lab. Another internships to do over the summer, and I've really learned so much already from my lap. I learn new software is. I've never had, never even heard of climb all before and not let something that I use pretty much every day. So that's super exciting and.

Like Nickel saying it helps you to understand what you want to do within your major, but also if you don't want to do that, and I think that's super valuable to know early on because it's a lot easier to make those changes within those first that first year 2 versus if you wait till your third year to do an internship and you realize that that's not something you want to do for the rest of your life, then it gets a little bit harder.

I.

I just build on that just real quick. I I totally agree with Emma, Kate and Nick and one of the things you'll get to see through internships. 'cause you kind of get to peek behind the curtain at the industry is you realize just.

How many different topics fall under one area, for example civil that you could be a Rhodes kind of person? You could be a water kind of person. You could be a structures kind of person, so you'll kind of get a little bit of exposure of wondering if there's a topic you're you're passionate about, an if it's worth going through the whole major form, or if there's a topic you're passionate about that another major tackles it from aspect that you like better. Hope that make kind of makes sense.

Yeah, to add on that I don't know if maybe not everyone will share the school of thought, but in my opinion you should be constantly seeking experiences, whether it be an internship or a lab experience, or you know, even if it's not relevant to or even if it's not necessarily an engineering internship or an engineering lab experience. All of those things kind of help you enable you to learn about yourself and learn what you are interested in and not interested in, and so let's say you start your first year in engineering and you do an internship in some kind of.

Research and development engineering thing. Even if you you know in your second year decide hey I want to do computer science or hey I want to do business. That internship experience is going to be with you and you know that's something you can put on your resume. And even if you're applying for a business internship or you know, so be it.

You know it's still a beneficial thing to have on your resume, so I think it's important to always be seeking internships.

Most definitely, I agree completely, and as I look at I'm placing students in research labs right now. And as we looked at people who we hired for internships at Hewlett-Packard, just that experience the fact that OK, maybe it wasn't directly in your major. The fact that you showed the initiative to do that is very important. We have one other student who's a senior mechanical engineer who is one of our Scott Scholars. He stumbled upon a coding internship one summer and will tell you it was one of the best things you ever did. So kind of like Peter Pan out that he really likes the Cody.

Things as well, despite the fact he's mechanical engineer and he continues to pursue Mechanical Engineer Engineering wants to stay there, but it's definitely giving him a lot of breadth really help contribute to different teams in district because he knows the capital side and the Cody was well now. So definitely take those opportunities.

Come see our next one says, how do you find the best fit of major and the service is real quickly telling you we do have an open option CSU, I would imagine that other universities have something similar where you could come in. When I first started and engineering and other useful undeclared that wasn't very long time ago of it. Now they can't open up to me. You'll actually take a class. We will get exposed to all the different majors, so that's definitely one thing they can help. Other things that can help us. Obviously as you you do internships and I want to turn it over to our.

Handle for their ideas on how you find your best fit major.

Yeah, I mean I can speak a little bit. I can't necessarily speak from personal experience given that I did come in with the major right will be graduating in May. That being said, I do know people have done the engineering open option program and they've had great success with that and it doesn't necessarily put you behind in your major necessarily. And so I would suggest that is one thing. The other thing is just if you have, you know, feeling that you might be interested in something. I also don't think it necessarily hurts too.

To try it out and try maybe that first introductory class in mechanical engineering if that's what you're into.

And you know, you may find out that. Wow, this is awesome. I love it. Or you may find out this is terrible. I mean, it's just kind of depends. So I would say you know the engineering open option would probably the best method, but if you feel like you have some level of confidence that like you like coding or you like mechanical engineering, give it a try and you may. You may end up loving it.

We are going over there. I think one of the great parts that I really liked about CSU is that I know definitely for chemical and biological engineering they have in most degrees have this that 101 class where it spot overview of what you will be doing in that major and they also have that for the open option and it just helps to give you a little bit more of an in depth of what you will actually be doing instead of I feel like what I always learned in high school was engineering is math and science.

And that was pretty much all they talked about, so it helps to give you a little bit more information and you can figure out hopefully in that first semester. Is this something I want to do? If not, you can try another one. If it is, then you'll be able to pursue it more in depth in later semesters.

Yeah, it's kind of the Golden question, right? Like what? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to major in, right? Like I think back to that senior year and I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I would say just I think you should trust your gut. I think that's always like a pretty important thing. And then you know, as I think we've touched on, like just because you study mechanical engineering or just because you study computer science by no means. You know, by no means are you going to necessarily have to be a.

Mechanical engineer, when you graduate, there's so many options in this world for different work experiences, so.

Obviously you want to feel comfortable in the major that you're picking, and you can always kind of change. But just remember that there are so many options out there an just because you're studying, mechanical engineering does not mean when you graduate, you're going to be hired as a mechanical engineer, or you could extend that to different fields of study too, so.

Just to add on to that.

So I was always fortunate 'cause I always knew I wanted to work in water resources and I decided I'd feel a bit better about being a water resources engineer instead of water lawyer.

So I I was fortunate in that, but I know that right now when you're filling out applications, you'll probably come across at least one prompt that asks asks you something like where are you going to be in 10 years? What are you going to do with your college degree? And that's a hard question. So when you're asking yourself these things, you know, just go with what's in your heart right now and try and pick that path. But just know if you end up having to change majors or change interest. That's completely fine and normal.

Whatever you put down in your application, now there's just so much room for growth and there are so many, there could be a topic out there that is your passion for whatever career you end up in. You just haven't found it yet.

Yeah, we always say students. You know getting engineering degree opens a lot of doors to be able to do so many things with an engineering degree and as we spoke of earlier yeah engineering open option is a great way to come into if you're if you know you want to do engineering, but you're not sure which area. So I do have one more question from destiny. Here is what is the next step in the hiring process. I'm not sure exactly what she means. I know everyone talks a little bit about.

How they initially started to find their internship? So perhaps.

If you can talk about, you know what happened after you initially. Maybe made a connection or applied, and if we can have maybe just a couple of you comment. We're just about out of time here.

If you're referring to the interview process, obviously it might be different nowadays, but I had to show up in person or I was hired before an official interview. I will say if you drive through bad weather, it can make an impression. One of my interviews I think I landed it because they actually cancelled the interview due to snow, but I had already made it in town 4 in the morning, so just let them know that you're committed.

I guess in that next step on the interview, if they know you're committed in your prepared, that usually helps out a lot.

Yeah, I think the typical processes you know you'll submit your application online with your resume and Whatnot, and then there will usually be some level of phone screen, typically with a recruiter I would say just kind of make sure you're on the up and up and you know you're you're good candidate. Then if you make it past that, I would say usually have an in person interview with the hiring manager and that could either be a technical interview or a more behavioral interview. I think kind of depends on the position, but that's Super General obviously.

And getting back to what kaylie had put in the chat earlier, we do have a wonderful engineering success center and they can do all kinds of things to help prepare you both to go to the career fair and talk to recruiters there also to get your resume ready and to get ready for that interview. Being a phone interview or an in person one, they'll do mock interviews and I assume now they're doing zoom interviews, two with everyone because that audio only that phone only interview is very different than doing a zoom interview versus an in person.

The one thing I would like to talk with on top of students I talk with is it's always good to practice first because if you sit down in that interview in front of someone and you're going to tell some story about something you know you maybe did a summer job right or answer a question a certain way the first time you try to explain it, the words no quite come out of your mouth way. You want them to, so to go and practice somewhere and give it a try first is always a good thing. So yeah, our engineering success center just has tons and tons of great.

Is for you to use so that you can both find places to apply for internships. Create your resume. Create a cover letter. Practice interviewing will also have great tips on things like OK if you are applying to this internship, go through and when you write your when you tweak your resume, maybe for that position, cover letter. Make sure you put keywords from that internship posting into your resume.

And so definitely important tips will have for you at our engineering success center we have come to just 4 minutes left now and I don't see any other questions in the chat that we have not gotten too. So what I'm going to do is have our panelists. I'll answer 1 final question here and it relates a little bit to internship Co op, but also just to all the other things you've been able to do is yes, you love. You see yourself changing the world once you leave CSU.

So I'm going to start amigo across my screen again, so I'm going to do Nick and then Peter that advocate and then Dixie. So Nick if you wanna kick us off.

Yeah, so I mean, that's obviously a pretty pretty big question, but I would say I see myself changing the world just threw you personal interactions with people ultimately feel like one of the big things you develop at CSU is kind of known as soft skills and how to have those interactions with people. And so I would say I see myself striving to be a manager one day and impacting my team, which hopefully is impacting you know, it's kind of exponentially growing in terms of the impact they have on things and so.

Kind of an odd answer to it, but I feel like that that's the way to do it.

So Nick actually stole my response almost to the T, so now it's not like a broken record, but.

Yeah, I think just like there are a lot of people at CSU and the like outside of CSU that have helped me in a lot of different ways and like inspired me in a lot of different ways. And so I think on top of what Nick said. I I'd like to return that however I can. However ways I can. So when I graduate, hopefully there are things I can do for the College of engineering and students within the College of engineering because I know that there are alumni who have helped me throughout my crew too so.

I think just returning all of the inspiration and help that I received from different people.

Yeah, for me it's a little different. I know that was wanted to help people, that's what my parents are in careers between firemen and teaching that they focus on helping people. But for me I know that I'm much better at that through the science way, so I'm just hoping that whatever research I end up going into or whatever industry I'm in that I'm able to have a positive impact through the research that I'm doing there.

I saw as I may have said, a lot about 20 times, so I want to go into water resources allocation an my goal in that isn't. I don't just want to build infrastructure that increases water security. One of my personal hybrid goals for my career as I want to help set up infrastructure and education programs for those communities so that they can learn to fix their own problems. So I'm just hoping to change the world by.

Promoting giving people the tools they need.

To fix their own problems.

Wonderful thank you all for that. And with that we have pretty much at the top of the hour. I'm going to put something in the chat here. Just an email you can write to explore@angier.colostate.edu sorrentino. My other screen I'm going to type it in the chat, so if you have other questions that did not get answered, please do send them into this email address so that they can get answered. So I'll finish typing that here. Right now, we can't thank all of you enough for coming, and thank you all. Nick Peter, advocating.

Dixie, thank you so much for being willing to share with all of our perspective. Students really appreciate it.

Of course, and if anyone has any questions I'm happy. I mean, after the fact. I don't know how they would get to me, but maybe we can. If anyone has any questions specifically for one of us, I'm sure the other panelists would be happy to answer so.

Yes, definitely frequent has more time we can. We can hang on here a bit.

Well, have an amazing weekend everyone leaving.

As well.

Perhaps most people have other sessions to go to as well.

We have a other sessions starting right now at the top of the hour too, so.

Do you still have?

Five or six folks hanging on his perspective. Students will give him just a minute more to see if they have any other questions.

I guess we'll just have to remember the trick next time that if we have technical difficulties we have to go out and come back in. That seemed to fix everything without changing anything else on my computer for some reason so.

I am so sorry for the screeching.

Couldn't be helped unfortunately. I said it was so strange I had to come in and out twice.

I finally just tried it again when the first time didn't work and.

Before I went out the first time, I tried messing with everything. Single setting I could think of, switching to my headset, everything, nothing helps, but for whatever reason, coming in and out twice was the magical formula.

Or Luckily we had a patient audience, right?

That's right.

Stephanie, which called the poor persons reset button. We used to call it work, hit the power.

Try it again.

So thank you so much.

Looks like we drop Dixie too and it doesn't hurt anymore questions. So thank you so much Nick and Peter and Emma. Kate really do appreciate your time. This is great.

Thanks.

Yeah, thank you Susan and nice to kind of informally meet you. Nick and Emma Kate.

Have a great weekend.

Thanks you too.