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Tiffany Onwu

  Student Stories , , , ,  

Tiffany OnwuThis week’s featured student is Tiffany Onwu, a chemical engineering major from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who did a coop rotation with DuPont/Chemours in New Johnsonville, Tennessee.

Onwu worked primarily in the department that focused on the finished product. Her projects included assisting with implementing and training of a new instrument that would be used to monitor the quality of the finalized product. She also was involved with a project that was used to improve the quality of the product by performing various laboratory tests and collecting data.

Her training experience consisted majority of instruments used to test for certain specifications on finalized products. She learned new technical skills on how to perform process capability which displays the actual performance versus the customers’ specifications based on each quarter.

A challenge she faced was learning how to be able to balance and manage her time between projects. It was easily solved with scheduling in her calendar and dedicating certain days to a project. She also learned that it helped with talking with her mentors frequently, which assisted in being able to prioritize various tasks.

Jillian Schwendeman

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Jillian SchwendemanThis week’s featured student is Jillian Schwendeman, a biomedical engineering major from Marietta, Ohio. Schwendeman has worked two coop rotations with ChoiceSpine. She worked in the Engineering Research and Design department.

The engineers assigned Schwendeman different tasks as they needed to get projects done. She helped a lot with editing and creating drawings for their parts. Her knowledge of the SolidWorks program is very strong at this point and she used it about 80% of the time for everything she was assigned. She was also given design tasks for improving certain instruments. At times it was challenging for her to complete the design tasks that she was given and since she didn’t have much experience it was difficult to fulfill the expectations that the engineers wanted.

Schwendeman learned to ask a lot of questions and to ask others for their input or ideas. Collaboration is a very important aspect for engineering related work. The experience has taught her how to work in a professional setting and was able to gain a lot of experience with not only engineering, but communication and responsibility in the workplace.

Hala Sura

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Hala SuraThis week’s featured student is Hala Sura, an industrial engineering major from Bartlett, Tennessee.

Sura did three co-op rotations with Georgia Power Company—A Southern Company. She worked in the Metro East and South Technical Sales department in charge of analyzing commercial and industrial load information to size transformers. The atmosphere was welcoming and she was able to relate to the other employees not just as a student.

Sura learned how to read mechanical, electrical, and plumbing plans and learned to look further to find answers to questions not just assume where you think it is. She also learned numerous professionalism skills and team building skills that she will be able to take back to the classroom. Sura gained value on seeing what was important to her by being able to coop while in school.

Ryan Mohr

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Ryan MohrRyan Mohr, a mechanical engineering major from Alcoa, Tennessee, is currently on his third coop rotation with JTEKT in Vonore, Tennessee.

Mohr works in the quality department. When he first started he was working with some noise issues with particular columns. Since then he has helped with organizing engineering areas for another plant that will be functional within two years.

While working for them, Mohr has gained knowledge in hand sketch drawings with format, noise testing machines, gear testing machines, and GANTT charts. One challenge that he encountered was after learning how certain machine shops needed there sketches, he had to send them a copy of the final sketch of some table lock brackets. When those needed to be sent his supervisors were on business trips and he had no one to double check if there were any mistakes.

After finding out the dimensions he sketched the drawing and sent it anyway. The machining company approved and the key lesson he received from that was to reach deadlines but also to benefit from doing things his way without someone double-checking him.

Connor McCollom

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Connor McCollomOur featured student this week is Connor McCollom, a mechanical engineering major who worked three consecutive semesters at BAE Systems in Kingsport, Tennessee.

“I thought it was really important to do a coop instead of an internship,” said McCollom. “My experience might have been different than some because I worked for an explosives manufacturer.”

The first semester of McCollom’s time with BAE involved mostly training related to the manufacturing process for the explosives being produced. As he moved into the later stages of his first semester on through the second semester, he was given more responsibilities on the job.

“As the coop progressed into my third and final rotation, I managed a project to completion as a fully functioning engineer,” he said. “Working a coop assignment verses an internship has given me a wealth of experience both for future interviews and for future careers.”

Taylor Short

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Taylor ShortThis week’s featured student is Taylor Short, an electrical engineering major who did a coop rotation with Southern Company in Atlanta, Georgia.

Short worked in Research and Technology Management. This department conducts research on various topics that affect our industry including: generation, transmission, distribution, renewables, and many others. She worked specifically in the transmission and substation research. There were three of them that focused on this research. They were involved in research that improves our current infrastructure and procedures.

Short was heavily involved in a couple of different projects including: two sensors for substation equipment, an online transformer dehydrator, and diagnostic tool for circuit breakers using current equipment. She also was involved heavily in one of the sensor projects. This project consists of using a laser to detect the amount of acetylene in a bushing. They conducted an initial lab test and provided feedback to the development team.

By accepting this coop she valued learning how to work in a diverse group of people. Her department is made up of a diverse group of personalities. While she had experience with a diverse group of people previously, this was a completely different environment. She has also gotten more exposure and experience in the field then she ever would have expected.

Mark Terrones II

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Mark TerronesMark Terrones II, a mechanical engineering major, spent his summer in his fourth rotational assignment as a production engineering co-op at DENSO Manufacturing in Maryville, Tennessee.

His duties included implementing new assembly lines and manufacturing processes, as well as continuously improving existing processes to advance production efficiency while decreasing defect possibilities. As an engineer, Terrones found the work very challenging. He also felt that it was gratifying to wprk each day to solve new problems that directly affect production workers on the assembly floor.

“DENSO is a great company with dedicated employees that have assisted me from day one in growing as a professional, an engineer, and as an individual,” said Terrones. “I am grateful for the opportunity with Denso and the Engineering Professional Practice Office.”

Kristina King

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Kristina KingThis week’s featured student is Kristina King, a civil and environmental engineering major from Telford, Tennessee, who worked as an intern student for Federal Highway Association-Eastern Federal Lands.

She spent most of her time working on the missing link of the Foothills Parkway in Townsend, Tennessee. She also did inspections of ongoing construction projects to ensure that the as-built matched the drawings from the design division and kept and inspector’s daily report that detailed each day’s events, the materials and equipment used, and the number of employees working. Outside of the field work, she maintained a concrete placement log with information regarding slump, air content, and temperature.

King learned many new technical skills such as reading plans, concrete testing, native plant revegetation, and general construction site activities. The most valuable benefit she took away from this experience was a new knowledge of how diverse civil engineering is and how much of every aspect is represented in one single project.

Sidney Barry

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Sidney BarryThis week’s featured student is Sidney Barry, a materials science and engineering major from Brentwood, Tennessee. Barry worked as a co-op student with Flint Group in Asheville, North Carolina.

He mainly worked in the technology department as a development engineer. He was able to lead a few projects related to quality improvement. One of the projects he got to oversee was the production trials with adjusted formulations to find a correlation between the downward shift in compressibility and a corresponding shift in microsphere density, a constituent of the blankets compressible profiles and viscosity.

One of the challenges while on co-op were that many of the projects were observational than hands on, so he had to familiarize himself with the different processes. A valuable benefit was being able to use statistics to look for variations and patterns in raw data, rather than using basic tools to find them.

Madison Brummitt

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This week’s featured student is Madison BrummittMadison Brummitt, a Biosystems engineering major from Churchill, Tennessee, who worked as a co-op student with Cargill in Memphis.

In reporting on his rotation, Brummitt worked in the acidulates department. His first assignment was to calculate the steam flow around an evaporator using historical pi data and the current valve percentage. From there, he was able to get a formula that could estimate the steam flow through the evaporator at any percentage. He also worked on upgrading a liquid transfer pump. The most valuable benefit he received was patience. Working in a factory he had to wait for long approval processes to ensure the work was accurate and safe which could take weeks.

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