MATC Welcomes 2009 UNL Summer Interns
From May 18th through August 14th, 2009, fifteen undergraduate students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will be participating in a thirteen-week internship organized by the Mid-America Transportation Center and designed to enhance collaboration between students, transportation firms and agencies, and faculty members. Each year, the UNL MATC’s Summer Intern Program attracts a large number of talented applicants seeking to broaden their knowledge of transportation engineering, learn about practical applications of theories discussed in undergraduate engineering courses, and work with some of the leading businesses and professionals in their field. The interns work full time for their sponsors and are encouraged to take responsibility for making the experience as profitable to their studies and careers as possible. A field trip to the sponsor companies and agencies that includes a presentation by each intern at his or her workplace provides the opportunity for the students to showcase their achievements and to introduce their fellow interns to their work. The sponsors, in turn, benefit from the program by working with promising transportation engineering students who have been selected by MATC based on their qualifications, interests, and academic achievements. For the sponsors, the internship is in effect a thirteen-week interview of potential future employees.
This year, nine sponsors are participating in the summer program at UNL. The companies at which students are interning include Felburg, Holt and Ullevig of Omaha, NE, Iteris, Inc. of Lincoln, NE, Union Pacific of Omaha, and Kimley-Horn Consulting, which is located in Dallas, TX. A number of students are working for transportation agencies such as the Nebraska Department of Roads and the City of Lincoln Public Works and Utilities Department, and half of this year’s interns are working at the MATC itself, focusing on the areas of transportation research and traffic engineering.
More than half of the 2009 interns are experiencing the program for the second time, having already completed a MATC summer internship the year before. Some of them are even interning at the same firm, agency, or institution as before. Joshua Redwine, for instance, who is spending his second summer in a row doing transportation research for MATC at the UNL campus, says that his positive experiences as an intern in 2008 and his desire to gain more experience in engineering research made him reapply this year. Rather than starting out from scratch and spending the first few weeks familiarizing himself with a new company and its projects, he wanted to deepen his knowledge in one specific field by continuing research he had first encountered a year earlier and by working with the same faculty members.
On May 15th, a few days prior to the beginning of the internship period, sponsors, interns, and faculty coordinators met at an orientation luncheon on UNL’s campus to receive information on this year’s program and to get acquainted with the other participants. At the meeting, Karen Schurr, a lecturer in civil engineering at UNL and the program facilitator, supplied important background information as well as suggestions on what the interns and sponsors could do to optimize the program’s benefits to them. She informed the participating students about the annual awards given to the intern with the best worksite presentation and to the author of the best internship report.
Site visits to sponsoring MATC firms and agencies will take place on July 17th. The interns submit their reports on August 12th, and the winning submission is selected shortly thereafter. The program typically ends with a celebratory luncheon, at which interns receive their certificates of recognition, sponsors are presented with appreciation gifts, and the winner of the 2009 Patrick T. McCoy scholarship for the most descriptive and best-written internship report is recognized. This year, the recognition luncheon will be held on August 15th.
MATC has several active intern programs at its partner institutions based upon the unique relationships for that university and state. We will be featuring additional intern programs throughout the summer.
