Optimizing Summer Externships

Summer immersive experiences provide students the opportunity to explore the limits of their engineering education and develop a depth in a field of study. For institutions that centrally manage these experiences, ranging from experiments conducted at other academic locations to research and development with industry partners, to procurement and development with government laboratories and program offices, it can be difficult to ensure that all participants are receiving quality experiences. A survey had previously been administered to capture the value of student’s summer immersive experience based on ABET Student Outcomes. Much of the data proved inconclusive due to the structure of the questions. However the data was used as a baseline for follow on research and guided the development of future surveys. Following the summer of 2013, a new survey was administered to students majoring in aeronautical, electrical, and mechanical engineering at three different colleges who had participated in institution-sponsored immersive experiences. The goal of the survey was to determine why students chose their summer experiences, what made these experiences successful, and how to improve experiences in the future to maximize return on investment. Success was measured not just in whether they experienced the ABET Student Outcomes (a)-(k) but to what level they were challenged in those domains. The results of the survey will be used next summer to influence which experiences are offered and refine how students are paired with a summer experience. The field of engineering education is constantly being refined. It is no longer enough to just be able to solve equations and apply principles of engineering. Engineers need to be able to work in multidisciplinary teams; delve into their specialty while also understanding how their focused work integrates into the overall system; and communicate ideas to both technical audiences and product consumers [1,2]. These goals can be difficult to accomplish within the confines of a classroom. Often this is left to industry to complete after the student has graduated, while academia focuses on the technical skills and fundamental knowledge. However, if students have the opportunity to participate in out-of-class experiences such as cooperative education programs, internships, and externships, they develop better analytical and group skills and become a more rounded engineering graduate [3]. Many internships and externships fall to the responsibility of the student to coordinate. This provides the student personal responsibility for their education and relieves workload from the faculty. Unfortunately this scenario does not work for some institutions where students have additional summer requirements for graduation that interfere with designated durations for internships. This is why externships – shorter summer employment experiences that normally P ge 24960.3 last only a few weeks – are more practical for these institutions than internships which often last a few months. This requires more direct involvement from faculty in the process by establishing relationships, coordinating the financial and logistical administration of the summer immersive experience, and assigning students to the experiences. While this adds to faculty workload, there are some benefits to an engineering program being directly involved in the internship/externship process. First, it creates an opportunity for students that would not normally have a chance to do a summer internship or externship. With limited time during summers due to requirements that are not finalized until mid-spring, there is not enough time for students to coordinate their own internship or externship. It also allows the faculty to influence which internships and externships the students participate in. While sponsoring agencies have a good idea of which intern would best support their organization, faculty from the student’s engineering program have a better idea of which summer experience would best support and enhance the student’s education. Finally, it allows faculty to apply academic credit to a student’s summer work by creating a structure and means to evaluate performance [4]. Research has been conducted through numerous sources as to the educational benefits afforded an engineering student participating in some out-of-class work experience, be it a cooperative education program [5,6], internship [4,7], or advanced undergraduate research in engineering [8,9]. Some utilize the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Student Outcomes to assess performance of individuals during internships [10,11] while others use interviews to gather perceptions of a sample of students’ experience with internships [12]. This paper attempts to identify the keys to a successful externship experience and how to best match the right student with the right externship. Survey data was gathered from four different ABET accredited engineering programs (one aerospace, one electrical and two mechanical) from three service academies (the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, and the United States Air Force Academy). The three colleges have a small student body with only about 4,500 students per academy, but they have strong reputations for developing outstanding engineering programs. The information from the surveys was broken down statistically to ascertain correlations in order to identify what led to successful experiences and how the engineering programs can focus efforts to improve success in the future.