Monday, June 12th, SEED 2017 begins! In this seven week internship 15 students from local and international schools converge on the OEDK to apply the engineering design process to projects started over the course of the year.

The make-up of the program is:
• 4 students from Malawi Polytechnic
• 3 students from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)
• 7 students from Rice University

This project is a collaborative effort from multiple organizations and institutions. This program was started by and is funded in part by the OEDK. Additional funding and assistance is provided by Rice 360, Rice’s Institute for Global Health. New for 2017 is a partnership with the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Brazil thanks to a grant from Rice University and the 100,000 Strong in the Americas foundation. This program is led by Founding Director Dr. Matthew Wettergreen and Director Dr. Deirdre Hunter.

The goal of the project is two-fold: to develop people and, to finish projects. As the summer begins we reflect on the development of people in the SEED program:

Developing people
We created this internship in 2009 as a way to provide real industrial experience to rising sophomores. This program was created in response to the difficulty of obtaining industrial internships with little academic experience.

Much of this development comes from how we address soft skill acquisition. We are extremely upfront and transparent with the students about the skills we seek them to develop: punctuality, teamwork, communication to name a few. In meetings and workshops we talk about individual skills, how they can be beneficial in the professional world, how to acquire them, some examples of their application. We have specific exercises that practice these skills or encourage the students to discuss these skills. Finally we attempt to model these skills and call out their good application by others.

Being part of this internship is like participating in a small design firm; we encourage the students to think of themselves this way. Students work from 8-5 with the understanding that they are here to finish projects, not to simply log hours. There is a dress code. After the projects begin, each day is started with a scrum meeting where teams quickly communicate what they tried to do, what they actually accomplished, and what their goals are for the day.
We expect that students will be able to leverage this experience into further industrial experiences in the subsequent semesters.

For many of our students this experience has been formative. Our past interns have reported that this summer internship has been the catalyst for obtaining future internships and ultimately full-time positions.