{"id":10029,"date":"2022-10-28T15:16:41","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T22:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about-hmc\/?p=10029"},"modified":"2022-10-28T16:24:51","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T23:24:51","slug":"new-internship-gives-students-real-world-startup-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/2022\/10\/28\/new-internship-gives-students-real-world-startup-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Internships Give Harvey Mudd Students Real-World Startup Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inspiring, validating, confidence-building: This is how Harvey Mudd College students describe their time working in\u2014and learning about\u2014startup technology companies as part of the College’s new Entrepreneurial Summer Fellowship<\/a>. In all, 19 students gained first-hand experience at a dozen companies, many run by Mudd alums, and got a taste of the startup space.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor this college-wide program, companies tell us what they\u2019re looking for, students do the same, and then we match them up,\u201d says Kash Gokli, inaugural director of entrepreneurship initiatives and Oliver C. Field Professor of Manufacturing Practice and Engineering Economics. He notes that both the students and the companies reported numerous benefits.<\/p>\n

The student view<\/h2>\n

\u201cI did research on campus before, but I also wanted to see what it\u2019s like in the industry, and see my engineering knowledge being applied,\u201d says Jenny Wathanakulchat, a senior engineering major who spent 12 weeks as a test-and-integration engineer intern at the robot-pizza-making company Stellar Pizza. Besides reviewing new components and reporting back to the design team, she also helped communicate the technology to its end-users, she says. \u201cOne of the biggest things I learned was how to incorporate the human aspect\u2014engaging with operators to make sure everyone knows how the tech works and how to do it safely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stellar Pizza had one intern, but other participating companies accepted more. One was Aquilius, a life science and medical technology incubator that brought in interns from several schools, including three from HMC. Interns attended lecture-style meetings centering on the ins and outs of running a new tech company, while also working in teams to solve one of several real-world, biology-related problems. \u201cThe idea was that we would create a little company from the start, develop actual prototypes and finally present that project to a panel of investors who would vote on which company had the most potential for moving forward,\u201d explains junior engineering major Devon Overbey. To sweeten the pot, Aquilius offered\u00a0 a $10,000 prize for the top team project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole experience was solid,\u201d Overbey says. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about starting a company since high school, but this internship definitely made me feel more confident in my abilities, especially the fact that my team\u2019s project showed promise to actual investors, and we ended up winning the prize, which we split three ways. That was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company view<\/h2>\n

Two of the other participating companies included Flycoin, a cryptocurrency-based, frequent-flier-loyalty program, and Trilo Bio, a robotics synthetic biology startup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted HMC interns because Mudders are amazing,\u201d said Nate Daiger, Flycoin CTO. \u201cI’ve met lots of them through HMC INQ, <\/a>and if you’re looking for smart people who can jump into any tasks and tackle them with aplomb, I don’t think you can do any better. And that’s what startups need most.\u201d The company\u2019s three Mudd interns excelled, he commented. \u201cEveryone here, including many HMC grads, were extremely impressed with their skill and diligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trilo Bio decided to offer an internship because it was \u201can opportunity to nurture a relationship with a Harvey Mudd student just beginning their career,\u201d says co-founder and CEO Roya Amini-Naieni. \u201cWhen I was younger and just starting out, someone let me join their research team. What I\u2019ve found is that people who are given an opportunity [early on] tend to work harder and be more creative because it\u2019s their first chance,\u201d she says. She was not disappointed, describing her company\u2019s intern, first year Arman Khasru, as a \u201csuper-independent\u201d person who dove right into a microfluidics project to assist with genetic engineering experiments. \u201cHe was our first intern ever at the company, and he did well,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?<\/h2>\n

With the program\u2019s successful first-year in the books, Gokli now hopes to expand it. \u201cMy plan is to make it a bigger-impact program, perhaps even doubling the number of students who participate.\u201d To do that, he encourages other companies to either contact him by email or phone or fill out the website form. He notes that HMC fully or partially funded some of the internships in 2022, so he is seeking other ways to sponsor students in 2023 and beyond. \u201cThis is especially important for students who are perhaps disadvantaged or are first-year students and typically would not get a nice internship like this,\u201d he says, noting that the investment helps students build their portfolio of knowledge and experience.<\/p>\n

The benefit to students is real, agrees Wathanakulchat. \u201cMudd is a very hands-on experience already, but it\u2019s still not \u2018real\u2019 compared to the outside [business world]. It\u2019s a really good, comforting moment to see that what you did in classes actually applies. It\u2019s very validating.\u201d Besides, she adds, \u201cI had such a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inspiring, validating, confidence-building: This is how Harvey Mudd College students describe their time working in\u2014and learning about\u2014startup technology companies as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":10034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,421,30,217],"class_list":["post-10029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering","category-entrepreneurship","category-students","category-unlisted"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}