Four graduating University of Central Florida (UCF) students completed their senior design internships through MC Assembly's Senior Design Internship Program. (Image courtesy of MC Assembly.)
Four students from the University of Central Florida have been given the advantage of a real-world experience with an electronics manufacturing services provider.
The internship presents an opportunity for students studying engineering, manufacturing and design to be on the manufacturing floor and work with manufacturing professionals.
During the internship, the students, studied a new product line and as their final project were invited to submit recommendations that would improve efficiency or productivity of a new aerospace product line the company has implemented.The Senior Design Internship is hosted by electronics manufacturer MC Assembly, which asked the interns to present their findings and recommendations to MC Assembly senior staff. In turn, the staff gave feedback to the intern team, something the students valued.
Jean Joseph, Dusean Guerrier, Natalie Hensley and Manuel Molina are the four students who recently completed the 3-month internship program.
“Not only were we able to come in and take some studies and do some analysis and everything, but we were also able to receive actual criticism from a real-life CEO who told us what he liked and didn’t like from our presentation. That is something you can’t fabricate,” said Joseph.
Guerrier agreed, stating that, “Talking to someone who's been in the field longer than you is always something great that you can take back and help to improve.”
The students also said they enjoyed using what they were learning in the classroom in a professional setting.
“It was a great benefit to get to work on the manufacturing line and see how they make something, from the planning department to actually building the actual project,” Hensley said. “It is a different learning experience, so we can definitely take that from this point forward and apply it to when we are presenting to our future managers and our future CEOs.”
MC Assembly’s Michael Watts said these kinds of opportunities can make a difference in students’ career decisions. “With mechanical engineering, many go into design work, but some go into manufacturing in one way or another. That’s what happened to me when I was their age. After interning at Rockwell Collins, my passion turned from design to manufacturing, and I switched to industrial engineering.”
He added that for many engineering students, a professional internship is their first exposure to a working manufacturing floor, “and to get that feeling of the differences between the working world and the college world is a good first step in understanding that it’s a different environment.”
For more information on the University of Central Florida’s experience with MC Assembly’s internship program, check out the video above.