Last time I wrote one of these blogs was last summer at the end of the 2016 SEED program where I was one of the interns in the program. This year I am happy to be back again as the SEED Teaching Assistant, working with Dr. Hunter and Dr. Wettergreen to help run the program for a new set of interns. A little background on me, I am a rising junior at Baker College here at Rice. I’m studying mechanical engineering, and I’m from New Jersey. It’s very odd to be going through similar activities as last year, but this time with a totally different perspective and role.
My program actually started two weeks ago when I got to Houston and began prepping for the arrival of the interns on Monday the 12th. I helped the instructors plan out the coming internship and make the presentation that we would use to introduce new topics and information to the interns. It was really nice when all the interns arrived Monday and we were able to get started after the week of prep leading up to it.
In the first four days, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to get to know and work with the new SEED interns. I knew many of the Rice students already, but the Malawians and Brazilians are new to me and have been fantastic to get to know. Much of my efforts in the first few days were centered around introducing these international students to life in the US and giving them the tools they would need to work at the OEDK as Rice students for the summer (e.i Rice ID cards, a meeting with OISS, making sure they all have access to the Rice database).
Activities we have done so far
- Icebreakers
- Several introduction presentations
- Zoo trip with team scavenger hunts
- Tour of the OEDK facility
- Deconstruction lab – taking apart discarded items to see how they work
- Culture Presentations
- Engineering Bootcamp with a project for Okapi at the Zoo
I’m sure all the interns will talk about these activities, but the one I really want to highlight is the Culture Presentation; from doing SEED last year, I know that this is one of the most important activities we do in the first week of the program. I split the students into four teams with roughly one Brazilian and Malawian, with two Rice students in each group. They were tasked with creating a slideshow that showcased a certain aspect of life in their home country, for instance, University Life. The goal is to help everyone in the program have a better understanding of the people they will be working with and hopefully learn a lot about other cultures. The students like to have fun with it, showing off some of the more interesting aspects of their countries, such as rodeo in the US, or Carnival in Brazil. The students did a great job with the presentations, and I hope it helped them got to know each other better.
Right now we are nearly halfway through our “engineering boot camp” where we run the students through the entire Engineering Design Process in five days. It’s very off being on the opposite side of things, running the activities and answering questions, rather than having the questions myself. The students seemed to have a great time with brainstorming yesterday for their Okapi Enrichment devices, and I’m really excited to see what they will produce in the next three days. My job will start to include being a lab assistant for the students, helping them to laser cut, 3D print, or do anything else in the OEDK to fabricate their designs.
The summer is just getting started, and I cannot wait to see the fantastic things that these interns will produce in the next seven weeks!!
-Jeremy