Every year our student chapter undertakes a spring trip, during which we visit various companies from industry. These trips are very beneficial to our members. They allow us to see firsthand what engineers do and provide us with opportunities to network with future employers. This past spring nine students went on the trip. We chose to travel to Minneapolis/St. Paul where we toured five companies representing several different areas of electrical engineering.
Our first stop was a railway track maintenance company, Loram, where we were given a presentation about the company and a tour of the facilities. During the presentation we learned all about the responsibilities of the electrical engineers who work for the company, designing and maintaining various types of railway maintenance machinery. Then we were taken on a tour of the production areas where the machinery is constructed, and we were able to see firsthand the machines we had learned about during the presentation.
After departing Loram we made our way to Medtronic, a company specializing in medical technology. At Medtronic we met up with a former NDSU student, Nathan Grenz, who gave us a tour of part of the Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management Department. We were also able to talk with some other engineers at the company who talked about their experiences working for Medtronic and other companies. They also showed us some pacemaker components which they were currently designing. Later, we ate lunch in the company’s cafeteria with a group of NDSU graduates who work at Medtronic. They shared their experiences and answered our questions about the company and engineering in general.
The Cummins Power Generation facility was our next stop, where we were given a presentation about the company and taken on a tour. During the tour we were shown many things, including the assembly areas where Cummins generators are built.
To finish the first day of our trip, we made our way to Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the United States. After checking in with the security guard in the main lobby, another former NDSU graduate, Sheldon Aldridge, took us on a tour of several different labs where he and his coworkers design and test various products for the government and military.
On the second and final day of our trip, we visited Goodrich, a leading supplier of systems and services to the aerospace and defense industry, where we met some electrical engineers who took us on a tour of the facilities. We were shown several different labs where aircraft sensors and other electrical components are designed and tested.
Overall, the trip was a success, and we're excited to start planning our next foray into the world of industry.
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