Working with Dr. Veety and Dr. Jur during the 5 week internship was the most rewarding way I could have spent my summer. In fact on the last day, I, as well as many others in this program, were very disappointed to see it end. For 5 weeks, I went to the Assist Center at NCSU on Centennial Campus every day; and every day brought a new and exciting adventure. Our very first day we were faced with the “Marshmellow Challenge” which required us to collaborate and team build from the very beginning of our internship. 
The entire internship centered around team building and collaborating successfully as a team. Our success was the success of our team, our struggles were the struggles of our team. Each team was faced with the task of creating a prototype to answer a health issue that focused on a concept of One Health. The teams then had to use the EDP (Engineering Design Process) to work through the issue until they had a working prototype. The final piece to the requirements was presenting the prototype, each teams’ experiences and EDPs at a Symposium.
We were able to take several field trips and lab tours during our internship. We toured the College of Textiles and watched the process of turning raw cotton into a spool of yarn. The internship also provided us with the opportunity to tour various labs and departments within the Engineering and Science fields at NCSU. Finally, we were able to tour Porticos. a business who specializes in utilizing the Engineering Design Process in their production of prototypes.
This internship exposed me to a variety of real world situations to use in my classroom. It also allowed for me to become more familiar with college possibility and future job markets for my students. The NC Assist Center granted me the opportunity to experience a world of technology I knew very little about and to envision a market for my students.
Working with this technology is my marsh-mellow from my internship. Creating the prototype and having the ability to bring this back into my classroom is my biggest accomplishment.
That sounds really cool! I admit I was a bit jealous of all of the Kenan Fellowships that involved teams/groups. You can start to feel a bit isolated working in the lab as the only person with an educator’s perspective. Although of course I had Kenan fellow team members who were looking at my lesson plans with me, they didn’t exactly know what I was doing in my fellowship so it was slightly more challenging to collaborate.