Provide Invaluable Experience and Job Recruitment Advantages



When he was a sophomore, Paul Ebert, ME '12, was still undecided about which engineering discipline he should pursue or even if he should become an engineer. That led him to Terri Martin, the College of Engineering's director of Recruitment and Co-op Program. She suggested co-opping for a semester. It might help point him in the right direction, she explained, and once he graduated, that real work experience—combined with his good academic record—would put him above most other job applicants.

So that spring the Huntingdon Valley, Pa., native co-opped with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., under Kevin Carmack, ARCH '84, MET '84, a NASA project manager and 2011 College of Engineering Gallery of Success honoree.

That prestigious resume builder, which involved working on systems to harness Space Shuttle payloads bound for the International Space Station, subsequently led to two co-op experiences with Honda—for whom he is now an engineer with the automaker's Research and Development Americas division in Raymond, Ohio.

"I cannot put into words the influence that Temple's Co-op Program has had on my life and, specifically, my job," he says. "If it were not for the guidance and opportunity from Terri Martin and Kevin Carmack, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Without question, he adds, it was worth delaying graduation for a year: "In a way, it is not delaying your graduation. Rather, it's swapping your graduation year with your first year of work. Instead of graduating with just a degree you have a year of work experience under your belt and a degree.

"Co-opping is your chance to see what your degree gets you, before it's yours, and a nice way to pay the bills."

During the past five years about 60 students have done full-time co-ops, for which they are paid and receive three credits. Annually scores of other students pursue internships, mostly during the summer. Besides working with the students on polishing their resumes and their interview skills—part of the career services Martin provides all engineering students—to ensure good matches she spends a lot of time getting to know both co-op/internship candidates and their potential sponsors.

"At universities where the co-op programs are quite large or mandatory, students often just get plugged into a position based on their major," Martin says. "But I handpick each student.

I have developed an intimate relationship with the employers and I know each organization's personality and the type of students they are looking for."

Says Carmack, who himself co-opped as an undergraduate: "Terri does a great job of screening these kids. I've never had a problem with any of the Temple kids we've picked up. They are hardworking, intelligent problem-solvers."

Understandably, many co-ops and internships ultimately result in full-time jobs. "If a student does a great job, the employer wants you back," says Martin. "They don't have to spend money on getting resumes, interviewing candidates and hiring. You're already trained and you're aware of their company culture, their clients and their products."

Co-ops also help students sharpen their career focus. While Ebert's NASA assignment concentrated on electrical engineering, it also involved mechanical engineering. "Working with those harnesses for six months, I learned I was more interested in the mechanical aspects," he recalls. So after completing his junior year, he spent the first eight months of 2011 in two co-op positions with Honda Manufacturing of America.

first he was a manufacturing engineer at an Anna, Ohio plant. To rectify a transfer problem that caused damaged engine components, Ebert designed and installed a small forklift bumper. He also resolved a robot-controlled conveyor-belt problem that periodically had shut down the drive-shaft assembly line. His supervisor nominated his solution for a corporate awards program. Also, Ebert proudly reports, "It's actually succeeding the productivity improvements we had estimated and Honda is planning on installing the system elsewhere."

His second co-op was with Honda's Market Quality Division in Marysville, Ohio. When a customer complained the spoiler atop his Acura RDX SUV had fallen off while he was driving, Ebert initiated an exhaustive series of tests. He drove an RDX at high speeds and on rough surfaces at the company's seven-mile test track; removed various combinations of the two bolts and 20 clips that affix the spoiler to the roof; froze water under the spoiler; and subjected it to high winds. It wouldn't budge.

Then microscopic analysis of metallurgy tests on the actual spoiler detected markings that ran parallel to the car. After building a replica garage door, Ebert subsequently confirmed that—in a clear case of "customer abuse"—the customer's automatic garage door had simply struck the spoiler.

Today Ebert—who proudly drives a used 1989 Accord with 400,000 miles on it—is responsible for the research and design of the Honda Pilot's roof rack and windshield, including cameras and sensors attached to the latter. Thanks to his co-ops, he says, the interviews that led to his current position were "basically just to see where I wanted to work with Honda."

Ebert's college roommate, Josh Sewald, CE '12, also parlayed a 2009 NASA co-op into an internship, another co-op and a full-time position—as a civil engineer with Dynamic Engineering Consultants, a land development consultant in Lake Como, N.J. "Working with some of the most brilliant people in the world further develops you as an engineer," says the Monmouth County, N.J., native. "Another benefit of the co-op program was having the opportunity to realize that, rather than actually working for a public agency, I wanted to be more involved with the business side of engineering."

A subsequent PennDOT summer internship taught him he preferred design more than construction. So in a co-op that began January 2011 and extended through the summer, Sewald helped Dynamic's large commercial and residential development clients assess the merits of potential property acquisitions. Then, as he does today, he helped usher client development proposals through the state regulatory and municipal approval processes.

Shortly after his co-op, Dynamic offered him a full- time job. "Since I had an internship and two co-ops, including one with them," says Sewald, "my resume and experience topped anyone else who was sending in their resume cold."

Last year NASA's Carmack also sponsored Egyptian native Moustafa El Ttayeb, ME '13, who began co-opping in January 2012 with Vantage Systems Inc. (VSI), a NASA subcontractor at the Goddard complex. El Tayeb worked on the solar array flexures that will power the Magnetospheric MultiScale mission (MMS)—four satellites scheduled to be launched late next year to study the crossing of magnetic field lines that can produce powerful solar flares.

Instead of getting rookie assignments, says a surprised El Tayeb, "ey quickly trained me and I ended up designing mass simulators for testing and wrote a lot of reports, work orders and authorizations. It was actual engineering work related to my field." VSI liked his performance so much it extended his co-op through the summer and last July offered him full- time employment following his May graduation—at a junior-level, not entry-level, position. (Recently he was deciding between that offer and focusing on the engineering firm he and his senior design project team have launched to promote a device they designed that helps disabled people enter and exit cars.)

Larrell Olin, ET '13, a Bronx, N.Y., native, had long-term internship and co-op experiences with both Johnson Controls and L.F. Driscoll. Two summers ago with Johnson Controls, he worked on a proposal to upgrade HVAC equipment on Temple's Health and Science Campus. en, after attending a minority contractors' meeting, his Johnson Controls experience led to a full-time construction management position with Driscoll all of last year—including a co-op experience during the fall semester. He worked during the day and took engineering classes at night. Working on the main campus' new high-rise dormitory, his duties included handing Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter a hard hat during his building tour.

Earlier this year Olin accepted an offer to become a sales engineer for Johnson Controls' fire and Security Division, which makes fire alarms and security systems for universities such as Temple. "All the experience on my resume," he says, "was due to the Co-op Program."

David Griffith, CE '13, who spent a year co-opping with Struc-Tite Restoration Inc., a construction management firm, agrees. e first generation Caribbean-American's assignments included the construction of a Virtua hospital building in South Jersey and the restoration of SEPTA's Girard Avenue Broad Street Subway station. "Every interview I go on, 75 percent of the time I talk about what I did with this co-op— what did I learn, how do I think that would apply to the new job?" says the Philadelphia native. "e networking opportunities and experience you gain are definitely worth it."

During the spring semester Christian Hochstetler, a junior mechanical engineering major from West Chester, Pa., co-opped with Pruftechnik Services, a German-based industrial alignment services company whose

U.S. office is in Blackwood, N.J. "We're encouraged to find new applications for the technology they already have," he says. "And school work can only get you so far. Once you get experience in the field, that's when you know how to do it."

One of Hochstetler's co-workers was Binu Mathew, ME '12, whose two Internships pursued during the summer or semester breaks are another way to gain valuable experience and contacts. The summer before her junior year Tiffany Spence, CE '10, of Bronx, N.Y., discovered she loved construction while interning with Turner Construction Co. on a project at The Rockefeller university in manhattan. "I got to work with so many people, including subcontractors and clients, and to see where a building comes from— from blueprints and pictures to an actual building—was very exciting.

"And you learn a lot about yourself, how to talk to people and acquire new professional contacts."

After spending the next summer at the construction site of a Virtua rehabilitation center in Voorhees, Twp., N.J., upon graduation she accepted a full-time position with Turner in Philadelphia and is now one of Turner's 20 area superintendents responsible for the construction of a $700 million New York City Police Academy project in Queens, N.Y.

"If I didn't have those internships it probably would have been impossible for me to get a job with Turner," she says now. "No one should go through college without at least one internship or co-op because then you know what you're getting yourself into regarding an industry or career path.

"You've got to test drive a car before you buy it."

Last year Terri martin suggested that marshall Feaster, mE '12 request a merely informational interview with mike Smedley, mE '91, regional vice president of Veolia Energy, which supplies steam energy to 300 Center City customers. That interview resulted in a summer internship that continued through the fall semester and, finally, a full-time job as an engineering planner after he completed his classes in December.

During his internship the Reading, Pa., area native discovered what he had learned in his thermodynamics class was applicable. But the job required a lot less math and a lot more hands-on skills. "There was a lot less hand-holding than in the classroom," he says, "so if you show initiative during an internship, I think there's a good chance of being offered a position."

co-ops with Pruftechnik led to an alignment engineer position there when he graduated last December. Why don't more Temple students co-op? "We're afraid of taking time away from the curriculum, which is a rigid, tightly set four years," Mathew says. "But one of my major goals was to get a job immediately. at's why the co-op felt like a no-brainer."