Building Engineering Experience (Without a Traditional Internship)

Internships are a fantastic way to experience life as a working engineer and develop additional skills before graduating. However, there are some summers when an internship just might not be the right option. Here are some alternative ways to build technical skills both during the school year and over the summer—some of them you can already start now!

Engineering Clubs and Project Teams

Penn State has over 1,000 student organizations, and many of them exist specifically to give students hands-on experience in engineering and computer science!

Professional Organizations Each engineering discipline has an associated organization for students and professionals in the field to share ideas and advocate for their work. In addition to being a great way to learn about a particular major, many of these organizations offer skill-building workshops in their field.

Examples:

•  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): offers workshops in electronics and computing
• Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE): offers a job shadow program and certification in six-sigma
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): offers programming training and competitions and technical interview practice

Special Interest Clubs and Project Teams Many engineering clubs are centered around a specific theme and seek to develop interest and knowledge in that area, often with a focus on application.

Examples:

• Theme Park Engineering Group (TPEG): “backstage” theme park tours, design training, and project opportunities
• Penn State Formula Racing (Formula SAE): designs and builds a functioning formula-style car to race in national competitions
• Engineers Without Borders (EWB): plans and implements a global humanitarian design project
• Nittany Data Labs (NDL): offers a data science training boot camp and project opportunities

“Mini-Internships” and Competition Opportunities Many organizations at Penn State partner with company sponsors to offer internship-like projects to students or run team competitions judged by the corporate partners.

Examples

• Society for Early Engineering Development (SEED): founded in 2019 by a group of fantastic female engineering undergraduates, this club offers company-sponsored internship-like experiences in the university setting specifically for engineering underclassmen
  
• Company-sponsored engineering & case competitions: while not a stand-alone club, many companies offer these opportunities to undergraduate project teams. Watch for email announcements from Engineering Career Resources!

Hackathons

Once per semester, Penn State hosts HackPSU, a 24-hour event designed to promote innovation and collaboration by providing a space for teams of students to build something cool! It is open to students of ALL majors and offers both a tech-focused track and a business-focused track. There are also workshops for beginners and experts alike to learn something new!

Personal Projects and Self-Study

This summer, Penn State’s Learning Factory (our on-campus makerspace) is offering numerous opportunities to learn new things and think like an engineer! The Great Learning Factory Make Off challenges students to design and build contraptions like “egg fly” devices and Rube Goldberg machines, and even offers prizes to top entries. Additionally, the Learning Factory is offering digital badges for short courses in engineering topics and diversity & inclusion that allow you to learn something new this summer and earn a micro-credential to show off to employers on your LinkedIn profile.

If you have a specific topic you want to learn more about, try enrolling in an online course! All Penn State students have access to LinkedIn Learning, a great resource for topics ranging from engineering software to communication skills. Coursera is also a good option with more comprehensive courses taught by faculty across the country, and it’s currently free for college students.

If you’d like to learn a skill that’s more hands-on, try building your own project! Adafruit has fantastic project ideas and tutorials (especially for electronics), but the Internet is a vast place and there are lots of inspiration out there.

No matter what your path looks like at Penn State, there are endless ways to get involved and build valuable skills outside of the classroom. Best of luck to you all—I cannot wait to see what you discover and accomplish!

Abbie Wagner

Team i Mentor