Summer Internships: Purpose and Experience

or engineering students, internships can be career defining moments. They can be daunting but also very fulfilling. At the end of the day, jobs in the real world are what every engineering student is looking for. I am currently completing my first internship as a chemical engineer, and it has been a great first professional experience as well as a glimpse into my future. This internship has been informative and I feel that I have used a lot of my chemical engineering skills in real world situations. The department I am working in is called Applications Engineering - our role in the company is to win projects from customers by developing proposals and pilot scale units that can eventually be further developed by other departments. Our main project this summer has been developing a method for direct lithium extraction from geothermal brines - for which we have developed a six column unit that has lithium selective media. The feed to this unit is a geothermal brine, which is a high salt concentration solution. The brine in this case is specifically high in boron, calcium, sodium, manganese, sulfur, and lithium. Our goal is to obtain as high purity lithium as possible so then we can send it to another one of Aquatech’s facilities to crystallize this product into battery-grade lithium. 

I have found that I am taking a high analytical role in this process. I have learned how to operate the six column unit, take required samples, perform analytical techniques, and develop reports. I’ve specifically learned inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES or ICP, for short) and ion chromatography to analyze the composition of our brine at different parts of the process.

Example Challenges During a Professional Experience

There was a lot on my plate at first, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to learn everything to be able to contribute as I hoped. There were some very daunting moments as I felt that I was letting my team down because of my lack of experience. I had to do a lot of self introspection and stick to the fundamentals as there were certain things I knew I could rely on. We’ve all got to do our best to find those things. One of the fundamentals that I knew that I could rely on is that I am studying at Virginia Tech: a well respected institution that prepares engineers for whatever career challenges that they may face. This is something we can all apply in our careers, especially when we are just starting out. We all aren’t going to know everything right

away. There are going to be projects and difficult moments just like there are with classes at school. But, we all have the ability to rise to the occasion and grow. That’s something to keep in mind next time something starts giving you trouble.

Although this experience has been challenging at points, I feel that it has been very beneficial to my professional growth and it is something that I am going to continue to work on for the rest of my career. Everyone should do their best to get an experience like this while in college. To be able to secure an internship or a co-op, there are several aspects that students should focus on.

How To Set Yourself Apart

First and foremost, students must focus on performance inside of the classroom. This is how you earn the chance to differentiate yourself from other candidates. This step requires the most work and a lot of it will go unnoticed - but this is how you begin to develop yourself professionally. By doing something hard, you prove yourself to employers that you can do difficult things at a high degree of accuracy.

The next aspect that students should focus on is attempting to secure some type of leadership position in an organization/club at Virginia Tech. There are many opportunities for students each year, and by simply putting yourself out there, you will be in a great position to win a spot. For example, organizations such as the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) have elections for officers each year and also appoint heads to their committees. By simply going to meetings and putting effort towards something bigger than yourself, you can take a big role in an organization. This allows you to be able to talk to potential employers about how you are able to manage an organization and its members and lead it to success. Students can directly demonstrate the fact that you can manage a project and multiple responsibilities at once. You will also learn a lot of soft skills in a role like this, such as initiative, public speaking.

A third aspect that employers look for is something that makes you unique or shows some personality - whether this be a minor that you take on, a study abroad you did, or more simply, the conversation that you have with the employer at the career fair. Employers aren’t looking for robots to join their team - they want personable people that can work through difficult situations to still perform the job at the highest level. A great place to start looking for study abroad opportunities is the Global Education Office. They also have a lot of scholarships that students can apply to each year to assist in the participation in programs.

This is a great opportunity to jumpstart your career and get into your field.