Careers or Internships

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

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Mon, 04/21/2025 - 13:12

The spring master’s graduate used an engineer’s mindset to navigate a tricky job market and land a job at Tesla.

Photo by Annie Barker

Career Services is trying new ways to connect with students

lblouin — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 13:55:58 +0000

Career Services is trying new ways to connect with students lblouin Mon, 01/06/2025 - 08:55

Laurel Draudt says it wasn’t that long ago that college career services offices were known for resume review services and not a whole lot else. At some institutions, this “model from the 1990s” is still the norm. But when Draudt started as ��-Dearborn’s Career Services director in 2022, she was excited to experiment with a broader vision for their five-person office. Borrowing from her background in higher education professional development, Draudt saw an opportunity to recast Career Services as something students used throughout their academic careers — not just in the final few months before graduation when the pressure of a job search suddenly becomes real. “We’re really trying to get students to think about what they can be doing now to be more competitive later,” Draudt says. “We want to be having conversations with first- and second-year students about the benefits of an on-campus job or doing research or studying abroad, because if we can reach them early enough, they actually have time to make changes and do these things.”

So far, that new approach is manifesting itself in a few different ways. Draudt says the office recently added two new career coaches to bolster the office’s core service of by-appointment and walk-in career counseling sessions. And what career coaches are focusing on in those sessions with students is expanding a lot. They still give their fair share of feedback on resumes and cover letters when that’s what students need help with. But coaches are just as likely to be talking with students about programs and careers that might match their interests, how to find a not-for-credit internship (and how to sound professional when you send your inquiries), figuring out how to talk effectively about past job experiences even if they’re unrelated to a career field, or how to develop a tailored job search strategy so they’re not simply applying to hundreds of jobs and hoping for the best.

Draudt says they’ve also been investing a lot of energy into expanding their lineup of in-person and virtual workshops. Looking to go beyond the staples, like sessions on effective job interviewing, they’ve added workshops on other equally practical topics, like understanding benefits packages (which involved a collaboration with ��-Dearborn’s Human Resources office), confident communication, and how to manage stress and anxiety during a job search. The latter two workshop ideas came from the office’s newest member — Career Coach Zainab Radi, a former career peer in the office who recently graduated from ��-Dearborn and took a staff position in the office in October 2023. Radi says being so fresh out of college and having just been through her own job search have turned out to be big assets when coming up with workshop ideas that students might actually find useful. For the confident communication session, she hit up one of her former instructors, COB Lecturer Christine Fischer, who covered everything from strategies for emailing to pitching your ideas to a supervisor to making presentations. The workshop on stress and anxiety grew directly out of conversations she was having with students. “I noticed that with the current job market, and even everything going on politically, students were experiencing a lot of uncertainty and there was a lot of stress and negative energy around that,” Radi says. “Some students who were struggling in their job searches were even having panic attacks. Not being trained in mental health or counseling, I wanted to find a way to provide meaningful support.” So she reached out to her contacts at Counseling and Psychological Services, who put together a workshop on how to manage anxiety during a job search. Radi says it was really eye opening for the attendees, many of whom had never experienced anxiety until this stage of their lives. “I remember they were really surprised by the idea of taking a walk or just getting outside and enjoying nature,” Radi says. “But that can really help you destress. You have to do other things than be on your computer all day applying for jobs, hitting refresh to check and see if you got an email back from an employer. That can just make things worse.”

Career Coach Zainab Radi, a '23 alum and the newest member of the Career Services team, has been responsible for several new workshop ideas.

Both Draudt and Radi say they’re excited to try out more new ideas in 2025, including some new workshops. Radi says a session on financial literacy and how to manage your income boost post-graduation is one topic she’s been thinking about. And Draudt says they’re going to be making more of an effort to collaborate with people and offices that are already regularly interfacing with students. “There’s so much competition for student attention these days, we think it’s a good idea to reach students where they are, because the reality is many of them still might not be thinking they need career services until it’s time for their job search.” Draudt says linking up with faculty, many of whom are already providing a lot of informal career advice, and tailoring more programs and events to specific communities, like international students, are two big priorities for the new year.

Of course, one of the biggest changes for 2025 is that Career Services will be getting a new home. Right now, the office is tucked over in Fairlane Center, but around Spring Break, the staff will be packing up and moving to their new digs on the first floor of the Renick University Center. Draudt is hopeful the convenient location at the heart of campus will help students see that Career Services is something they can be taking advantage of at any point in their college journeys.

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Want to keep an eye on upcoming Career Services workshops? Check out the office’s VictorsLink page. Story by Lou Blouin. Photos by Annie Barker.

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Mon, 01/06/2025 - 13:45

New workshops on topics like managing anxiety during a job search, understanding benefits packages and confident speaking are part of an effort to impact students long before their senior-year job searches.

The Career Services team, from left: Career Coach and Professional Development Manager Devin Johannis, Assistant Director Mai Qazzaz, Career Coach Zainab Radi, Director Laurel Draudt and Senior Professional Development Program Jennifer Macleod.

The (solar) power of teamwork

lblouin — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:46:29 +0000

The (solar) power of teamwork lblouin Wed, 11/13/2024 - 09:46

Sustainable energy is a growing field, with opportunities for students working toward a number of different majors, especially in engineering. But when two students saw a need for more ways to develop hands-on experience on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus, they took the lead to launch a collaboration with a national organization providing just that.

Christian Cannon and Alexis Thompson not only brought GRID Alternatives to ��-Dearborn but — as co-presidents of the university's student chapter — united the group with the Ann Arbor campus to provide meaningful experiences installing solar energy systems in San Diego County, Los Angeles and even Nepal. Cannon — a 2024 environmental science graduate — now works as a clean energy business development intern at Walker-Miller Energy Services in Detroit. Thompson has been working as a consultant for sustainability projects while completing her degree in mathematics, with a certificate in geographic information systems.

Cannon and Thompson began exploring a partnership with GRID Alternatives, the largest nonprofit solar installer in the United States, out of a shared interest in gaining hands-on experience in the clean energy field. While attending the Solar Power International conference in Las Vegas in 2017, they met Tim Sears and Erica Mackie, the co-founders of GRID Alternatives, who helped connect Cannon and Thompson with the then-leaders of their affiliated student group chapter — GRID Alternatives Students for Sustainable Energy — on the ��-Ann Arbor campus. Soon after that meeting, Cannon and Thompson became the co-presidents of a newly united U-M chapter under the guidance of faculty advisor Tony Reames, an associate professor in U-M’s School of Environment and Sustainability, and Eva Gogola, ��-Dearborn’s director of annual giving and advancement services.

Students participating in GRID take part in an immersive service-learning opportunity called Solar Spring Break, providing students with hands-on experience at GRID locations in different regions throughout the country and abroad. The students also volunteer to install solar panels in low-income neighborhoods. "This work represents an invaluable opportunity for students to gain real-world experience in the clean energy industry," Cannon says.

One challenge student-run organizations face, however, is funding. Like GRID-affiliated chapters across the U.S., the U-M chapter had to raise money for the solar installation equipment, travel and other expenses. Thompson stressed the need for equity in these efforts, pushing back against the trend that the students who are able to participate in such opportunities are only those who can personally afford to do so. "One of the things we wanted, which has not always been the case with other GRID campus groups, was to send people to work in these communities who look like those communities," Thompson says.

Cannon and Thompson worked closely with Mariah Fiumara, director of U-M’s Engineering Center for Student Organizations, to raise funds through competitive grants, business sponsorships and local fundraising efforts, while Ann Arbor GRID member Camille Burke, a 2020 grad, rallied support from other student-run organizations. The group raised more than $100,000, which supported a dedicated team of 100 students from both campuses. "I want to stress that this is something students can do, that it is possible," Thompson says. "We want this work to continue for ��-Dearborn and Ann Arbor students."

The group took part in three Solar Spring Breaks, the first installing solar energy systems on the La Jolla Indian Reservation near San Diego, the second installing in residential homes in Los Angeles and the most recent on the Kumal Tower in Nepal's Chitwan National Park. Together, these initiatives represent more than 40 kW of solar capacity — an amount that can typically supply electricity to about 10 average U.S. homes while offsetting 40 tons of carbon dioxide.

Camille Burke, Christian Cannon and Alexis Thompson (top row, second, third and fourth from left) with fellow GRID members on the Kumal Tower.

"Our campus was the first university to conduct an international trip through GRID Alternatives’ Solar Spring Break program," Cannon says of the group's work in Nepal. The idea for an international installation took root with the group's first experience on the La Jolla Reservation, where the proximity to Tijuana, Mexico, inspired the team to provide sustainable energy to lower-income areas beyond U.S. borders. While the logistics were unfavorable for a Solar Spring Break in Mexico, the students found an ideal opportunity to do meaningful work rehabilitating Nepal’s Kumal Tower, a disused watchtower that previously did not have a functioning power supply, converting it into a fully functional wildlife observation center.

Members of GRID Alternatives Students for Sustainable Energy found their experiences installing solar energy systems meaningful on both professional and personal levels. “Working with GRID Alternatives taught me how my engineering skills could make sustainable energy accessible to those who need it most," says Yesha Lester, a 2019 ��-Ann Arbor grad. "I gained hands-on experience with solar technology and saw the power of community-focused projects. Knowing our work would lower a family’s bills made the project rewarding and showed me that engineering is about improving lives, not just solving technical problems.”

While GRID has not been active at ��-Dearborn since 2022 because Solar Spring Break programs were paused for the pandemic, Cannon has been speaking with other sustainability groups on campus about adopting solar work and leading more sustainability-focused international projects in the future. He says the rewards for interested students are well worth the effort: "Working with GRID Alternatives has deepened my academic learning and shaped me into a leader within the clean energy industry.”

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Story by Shaun Manning. Photos courtesy of Christian Cannon.

International

Sustainability

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Wed, 11/13/2024 - 14:43

Alum Christian Cannon and student Alexis Thompson led GRID Alternatives Students for Sustainable Energy, an inter-campus student group providing hands-on experience in renewable energy.

Christian Cannon, left, helps install solar panels on the roof of the Kumal Tower, a disused watchtower in Nepal.

Dearborn Wolverines gain real-world experience through internships

kbourlie — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 16:35:56 +0000

Dearborn Wolverines gain real-world experience through internships kbourlie Thu, 10/17/2024 - 12:35

For students getting ready to enter the workforce, internships offer valuable opportunities to build skill sets and resumes, while also testing out knowledge learned in the classroom in the real world. Reporter recently talked to four students who dedicated part of this past summer to an internship to learn more about their experiences.

Caroline Tepper, College of Business

Business major Caroline Tepper plans to graduate this December and already has a job lined up with Ford Motor Company, thanks in large part to a purchasing and supply chain internship she completed this summer.

“I'm lucky and grateful that I've been extended an offer to actually join Ford Motor Company starting in January. It's really exciting to come back after my internship,” Tepper says. “I'll be a Supply Chain Ford College Graduate in purchasing, and that entails a three-year rotational program. You move through two or three different rotations to help new hires gain experience in the field.”

Tepper says her summer experience gave her a chance to put skills she learned to the test.

“I actually utilized pretty strong data analytical skills throughout learning how to navigate several of Ford's data risk tools that they use in order to monitor risks throughout the entire world,” says Tepper.

For other students preparing to enter the workforce with their first internship, Tepper reminds them, “You have to think of it like a foot in the door to a company potentially extending you a full time position. It’s almost like a longer interview.”

“Try your best, ask questions,” Temper advises. And remember: “We have fresh and diverse perspectives, and what we can bring to a company from our college experience, I think, it’s really valuable.”

Christina Townsend, College of Arts, Sciences and Letters

��-Dearborn senior Christina Townsend found her perfect internship match this summer working in social media and public relations for the Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit animal shelter. The journalism and screen studies major – who is also minoring in marketing – needed to complete an internship to fulfill her degree requirements. For the animal lover, being able to use her videography skills while building her marketing skills was an ideal fit.

“I'm a big cat and dog lover. For the dogs, I joined them on walks around the site and I took pictures with them. With the cats, I visit them in their cat condos and make videos with them or put them in a greeting room and make a more interactive video with some toys. But I also enjoy the people. There's a lot of good people here,” says Townsend.

One of those people was her supervisor, Manager of Development and Community Relations Maria Nardecchia, who Townsend says “took her under her wing” and went above and beyond to make sure she got the experience and knowledge she needed out of the internship. “I left the internship more confident in my ability to market and showcase my skills,” says Townsend.

Logan Kilby, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Mechanical engineering senior Logan Kilby spent summer 2024 continuing to gain hands-on experience through his product engineering co-op with American Axle and Manufacturing. The mechanical engineering student has worked in driveline systems for the company over the last three years, largely focusing on component engineering. While the co-op has given Kilby the real world experience he needs to succeed as an engineer, it’s also given him an opportunity to make industry connections both within his company and with original equipment manufacturers such as GM.

As he looks toward graduating this December, he’s confident in the knowledge and skills he’s built. “I've really gone from not knowing anything to having all kinds of skills under my belt. And I feel confident that I can do the job of any full-time engineer,” says Kilby. “Most of the tools I would use as an engineer, I already have about three years’ experience with.”

This October, Kilby accepted a full time position as a mechatronic engineer with AAM.

Maya Abdallah, College of Education, Health and Human Services

Maya Abdallah

During her final semester at ��-Dearborn, Maya Abdallah completed a summer internship at United Outstanding Physicians with their data entry department. While the internship was not required for her major, Abdallah wanted to get insight into the business and insurance side of healthcare since the next step in her career path is applying for medical school. During her internship, Abdallah was able to learn more about how medical insurance works and the collaboration that happens behind the scenes between physicians and insurance providers to make sure the needs of patients are met. She says one of the best aspects of her internship was the people she worked with. “They were very welcoming and very nice, and they really wanted to make sure that I had a good experience there. They really made sure that I was learning.”

While Abdallah is now looking at applying to medical school, she’s glad to have had this experience early on in her academic career so she can put that knowledge into practice and knows what to expect later on.

“It's a very niche and specific part of the medical field that you wouldn't really see even as a physician,” says Abdallah. “I definitely will be using it in my future career.”

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Interested in learning more about completing an internship as part of your academic journey? College of Arts, Sciences and Letters students can contact the CASL Internship Office. College of Engineering and Computer Science students can contact CECS Experiential Education. College of Business Students can contact the COB Business Career Center. College of Education, Health and Human Services students can contact CEHHS Field Placement.

Story by Kathryn Bourlier. Photos by Julianne Lindsey and Julie Howells.

College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters

College of Business

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

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Mon, 10/21/2024 - 16:17

Hear from students across ��-Dearborn’s four colleges who furthered their career goals over the summer.

Caroline Tepper outside of the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters in Dearborn where she completed in internship over the summer. Photo by Julianne Lindsey

Caroline Tepper outside the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters in Dearborn, where she completed an internship over the summer.

Reckoning with AI’s trust issues

jpow — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 19:30:40 +0000

Reckoning with AI’s trust issues jpow Fri, 07/26/2024 - 15:30

It seems to be an unbreakable human habit to unleash technologies into the world and ponder the consequences later. The most recent dramatic example of this phenomenon is the artificial intelligence boom. For years, critics — even many who believe the technology can do a lot of good in the world — have been sounding the alarm that AI applications are creating sticky situations when it comes to safety and fairness. Autonomous vehicles have injured and killed pedestrians. Algorithms used in healthcare, banking and law enforcement are embedded with human racial biases. More recently, companies behind generative AI models like ChatGPT have apparently developed their models using an unfathomable amount of copyrighted material — without bothering to ask content creators.

AI’s reach into our lives is bound to get broader, and Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science Birhanu Eshete wants his students to be prepared — not only to create powerful problem-solving technologies, but to reckon with the implications for our lives. That’s the mission behind a new trustworthy AI course that Eshete created and launched in Winter 2024, which blends a project-based curriculum focused on specific technical AI applications with explorations of the technology's social, political and economic contexts.

With a two-pronged approach and a sprawling topic, it wasn’t the easiest course to design. Eshete says trustworthy AI is a label that ecompasses a diverse set of issues, from security, privacy and safety to transparency, ethics, fairness and regulation. Any one of those seven topic areas he used to organize his class could be a course on its own, he says. “But the value of an overview course is that students get introduced to a pretty comprehensive set of issues — and then they can go deeper into anything that interests them,” he says. Plus, by reinforcing that almost anything AI touches has human implications, he can drill home to a bunch of future AI professionals that AI is hardly just a technical discipline.

For example, in the ethics section of the course, the class pondered looming real-world applications of AI like autonomous trucking. Eshete says proponents of long-haul autonomous trucks often advance a safety argument — namely, that highway accidents involving trucks are often catastrophic and a result of human error. If the job could be done more precisely by machines, then we could reduce the number of injuries and fatalities. “So it might sound ethically right to make trucks autonomous, because we could save lives,” Eshete explains. “But on the flip side, you’re going to push thousands of truck drivers out of a job, and they and their families will suffer. In fact, the World Economic Forum estimated that roughly 75% of jobs have the potential to be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Imagine the disruptions to society. So workforce replacement is not just a technology issue. It’s a human issue.”

You can also see the complexity and variety of the trustworthy AI space in the range of topics students chose for their final projects. One team looked at algorithms used to detect skin cancer to analyze the technology's level of racial and gender bias and explore ways to enhance fairness while protecting privacy. Another group explored techniques for reducing the error rate of stop sign detection algorithms used in autonomous vehicles. A third team investigated techniques used to acquaint a model with tricky inputs designed to fool it. And the final group of students explored how to “poison” databases of customer reviews, a technique attackers use to influence consumer sentiment about products.

Doctoral student Firas Ben Hmida, who’s also a research assistant in Eshete’s lab, says the trustworthy AI topic has been a real eye opener for him. “When I started at my engineering college back home in Tunisia, I started off in cybersecurity, and my interest, probably like everybody else, was advanced attacks and how to defend against attacks,” Hmida says. “But then, as I started working with Professor Eshete, you see that there is this whole other side to cybersecurity and AI. Outside the course, even several of the projects we’re working on in the lab deal with trustworthy AI, so I’m even thinking my PhD is now going to be about trustworthy AI.”

Eshete with his doctoral students Firas Ben Hmida (right) and Philemon Hailemariam. Photo by Erin Kirkland/Michigan Photography

Eshete heard that kind of feedback pretty consistently from students. “I got a lot of comments like, ‘It allowed me to look at AI beyond neural networks,’” Eshete says. “That’s great to hear because you don’t know how students are going to react when you spend half your lecture in an AI course talking about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and ethical philosophy.” In fact, Eshete says the feedback was the most positive of any course he teaches. Specifically, he says students appreciated that the overview format allowed them to explore many topics in a single course. They also liked the project-based format, which eliminated the need for exams and quizzes.

Eshete plans to teach the class on campus every winter semester, with the exception of Winter 2025 when he’ll be on sabbatical. He’ll actually still be teaching the trustworthy AI course though — just at Addis Ababa University, his alma mater in Ethiopia, where he'll be spending part of his leave. “I’m actually really looking forward to teaching the course in two different countries, because any of these AI trustworthiness issues could mean many different things depending on the context,” he says. “For instance, if you’re thinking about fairness and race here in the U.S., we’re accustomed to thinking about things in terms of Black and white. But in Ethiopia, everybody is Black. So the context of race is slightly different, and we think more about different ethnic groups. So it will be interesting to see how students respond to thinking about these issues for AI applications in high-stakes contexts.”

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Story by Lou Blouin

Technology

Computer and Information Science

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Mon, 07/22/2024 - 19:30

In his new trustworthy AI course, Associate Professor Birhanu Eshete is helping students go beyond the technical know-how and understand the social, political and economic contexts of the artificial intelligence boom.

Photo by Erin Kirkland/Michigan Photography

Spring ’24 grad parlays research and baseball experience into MLB job

lblouin — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 14:27:20 +0000

Spring ’24 grad parlays research and baseball experience into MLB job lblouin Mon, 06/10/2024 - 10:27

Matthew Williams doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t picture himself in baseball. When he was a 4-year-old kid, the dream was playing in the big leagues. As he got older and more realistic, he imagined being a coach or a strength and conditioning trainer might be where he’d land. His associate degree in exercise science from Grand Rapids Community College put him in a good position for that. But after graduation, he decided to keep going with his education and transferred into the business program at ��-Dearborn, where he also scored a starting position as an outfielder and pitcher on the baseball team. “My thinking was maybe I’d open my own training facility, and I knew the baseball side of things. But I didn’t know anything about running a business,” Williams says. About a semester in, however, he figured out the business curriculum wasn’t for him. Baseball remained the dream, but he’d have to find another path.

Williams took a straightforward approach to finding a new major: He did a thorough survey of the university’s online program catalog and tried to find something that matched his interests and exercise science background. He’d never thought about engineering, but among the course offerings in the mechanical engineering program he found several biomechanics classes. He decided to place his bets there, and it turned out to be a much better fit. He found Associate Professor Amanda Esquivel’s courses particularly interesting, and when he discovered she ran a bioengineering lab that focused on athletics and injury prevention, he reached out to see if she had any open positions. “It was kind of a chance thing,” Williams says. “I didn’t really know that doing research with a professor was something you could do, but a friend of mine was telling me about their experience, so I just sent Professor Esquivel an email and hoped she’d have something available.” It turned out Esquivel did, and Williams landed a position as an undergraduate research assistant. For someone who loved sports and exercise science, it was pretty much a perfect part-time job. In the lab, Williams got to work on several projects that used wearable sensors and video motion capture to research how various movements strain the body, with a goal of preventing ACL injuries. Though many of the studies focused on girls’ soccer, Esquivel also helped Williams with his own independent study, where he analyzed open source data collected on baseball pitchers.

Williams played three years for ��-Dearborn’s baseball team and owns several team records, including most career home runs. He had to miss the April commencement ceremony for a game. He hit three home runs that day, the most ever by a ��-Dearborn player in a single game. Photo courtesy ��-Dearborn Athletics

Williams wasn’t necessarily thinking about it when he started in Esquivel’s lab, but the work was basically setting him up for that career in professional baseball he’d been searching for. Elbow injuries, long a problem for pitchers, have become a full-blown plague in the modern game. Today’s pitching is all about velocity, and as athletes try to throw harder and harder, they’re almost literally ripping their elbows apart. Even young pitchers are having to resort to Tommy John surgery — the sport’s now-routine remedy for ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, named after a former MLB pitcher. Fear of catastrophic elbow injuries is also why starting pitchers going deeper than five innings is now the exception not the rule, something many fans and critics have pointed out has fundamentally changed the nature of the game. Williams says teams now closely track pitching speed and total innings pitched in an effort to ensure their star players don’t end up on the disabled list — or out of baseball altogether.

In the past few years, teams have also started using biomechanics labs to reduce injuries and evaluate prospects. Using the same technology that Williams used in Esquivel’s lab, trainers try to figure out if aspects of a pitcher’s throwing motion are putting them at risk for injury, as well as whether changes to their pitching mechanics could help prevent injury. With high-speed cameras, force plates in the pitching mound and wearable sensors affixed to an athlete’s legs, torso, pelvis, shoulders and elbows, Williams says engineers can actually track how energy flows through the body at critical stages of the pitching motion. The data reveal, for example, if a risky amount of torque is being placed on the throwing elbow. You can also measure whether a change in motion, like a slightly earlier rotation of the pelvis, can reduce strain on the elbow without sacrificing velocity.

As a baseball player, Williams knew that biomechanics labs like this were becoming a big thing in the sport. So as graduation approached, he started looking into whether he could parlay his ��-Dearborn experience into a job. “I basically Googled ‘MLB and biomechanics’ and found a job posting with the Kansas City Royals to work with their pitching prospects in Arizona,” Williams says. Not surprisingly, with Williams’ history as a pitcher, lifelong baseball player and someone who had experience working in the same kind of biomechanics lab, the Royals snatched him up. Williams says it’s basically a dream job — aside from the fact that it’s with one of the Tigers’ division rivals and it’s not actually playing baseball. However, he’s not ready to accept that his playing days are behind him. He points out that he still has one year of college eligibility. And if he decides to go to grad school at some point, he’ll likely take a look at his chances of making the school’s baseball team when deciding where to apply — even if that means being the oldest guy on the field. That, or he says he’s considering trying out for the independent league team near the city he’ll be living in in Arizona — though there’s no chance he’d give up his job with the Royals even if he made the roster. “The pay is like $200 for three months. So, yeah, probably not worth it,” he says. His years at ��-Dearborn, however, seem like they were.

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Story by Lou Blouin

Research

Undergraduate Research

Athletics

Mechanical Engineering

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Mon, 06/10/2024 - 14:26

After working in Associate Professor Amanda Esquivel’s bioengineering lab, ��-Dearborn slugger Matthew Williams landed a gig working with pitchers in the Kansas City Royals’ biomechanics facility.

��-Dearborn baseball player Matthew Williams. Photo courtesy ��-Dearborn Athletics

A new-look program is preparing students for a paradigm shift in the auto industry

lblouin — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 16:32:58 +0000

A new-look program is preparing students for a paradigm shift in the auto industry lblouin Wed, 03/22/2023 - 12:32

��-Dearborn’s Automotive Systems Engineering master’s program was launched way back in 1996, and since then, it’s grown to become one of the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s most popular graduate programs — including being a big draw for international students. But automotive engineering is quickly becoming a much different discipline than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, says Mechanical Engineering Professor and program director Taehyun Shim. “We’re seeing the paradigm shifting from the internal combustion engine to electric-powered vehicles. And at the same time, we’re seeing a proliferation of electronics-based systems, whether it’s driver experience systems or autonomous driver assist technologies. So in order to serve our students better, we wanted to make some modifications to the program that would give them opportunities to learn about these compelling technologies,” Shim says.

So what’s new? For starters, the name. The new Automotive and Mobility Systems Engineering program name reflects the broader scope of today’s transportation engineering ecosystem. In addition, the areas of study have been reorganized to focus on four multi-disciplinary concentrations. The Vehicle Powertrain and Performance concentration emphasizes core vehicle technologies that are critical regardless of the propulsion method, like vehicle stability or energy management, with additional advanced coursework in combustion engines and electric batteries. The Vehicle Design and Manufacturing concentration gives students training in topics like manufacturing processes, materials, safety testing and human-computer interactions. Two more concentrations are a more direct response to the paradigm shifts Shim identifies above. The Vehicle Electrification concentration dives into the study of electric motors and batteries, as well as the expanding universe of electronic controls that are critical to today’s cars. Finally, the Intelligent Vehicles Systems concentration focuses on technologies critical to autonomous vehicles, including semi-autonomous driver assist technologies. There’s also a general concentration for students who want to experience courses from multiple areas.

Shim says this likely isn’t the end of the program’s evolution. In the coming years, he says they expect to add more coursework in emerging areas like vehicle cybersecurity, connected vehicle infrastructure, pedestrian-vehicle interactions and smartphone technologies. “I think what we’re seeing is that automotive engineering is no longer just a mechanical engineering-based field,” Shim says. “For example, we have very talented faculty in electrical and computer engineering who are working in machine learning or robotics or cybersecurity, all of which have direct applications to vehicle and mobility technologies. So we think this is an opportunity to be more collaborative across the college and make the program even more interdisciplinary.”

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Are you interested in learning more about the new Master of Science in Automotive and Mobility Systems Engineering? You can request more information or apply today on the program page. Story by Lou Blouin.

Technology

Mechanical Engineering

Off

Wed, 03/22/2023 - 16:31

Launching in Fall 2023, the revamped Automotive and Mobility Systems Engineering master’s program is built for an industry being transformed by electrification and autonomy.

Mechanical Engineering Professor Taehyun Shim and doctoral student Syed Adil Ahmed review a mobility simulation in Shim's lab.

Class of Fall 2022: CEHHS graduate Natalie Fowler

lblouin — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:37:14 +0000

Class of Fall 2022: CEHHS graduate Natalie Fowler lblouin Wed, 12/14/2022 - 11:37

Lately, there have been a lot of moments that make student teacher Natalie Fowler feel good about her choice to make a career move into teaching. There was the day a couple weeks ago when a student she’d been helping with his English and math homework told her that he wished she was his teacher for every subject. Just before Thanksgiving, a student had an assignment for another class to write a handwritten thank-you letter to a school staff member he appreciated, and he chose her. The day she announced that her last day was coming up, one student started to cry.

Fowler has always wanted to end up in a profession where she felt like she was directly helping people, but her first try at that wasn’t teaching. Initially, she thought she’d use her chemistry degree from Iowa State University as a launchpad to pharmacy school. But she wanted to try a real-world job in the field first, just to make sure committing the next eight years of her life to a doctoral program was a good idea. The job she took at a local branch of a chain pharmacy was an eye opener. “I really didn’t like the corporate mentality and the for-profit attitude,” Fowler says. “There were a lot of people who needed help or couldn’t afford what they needed, and you just sort of said ‘sorry,’ and then felt bad about it for the rest of your day. It was hard to see people come in for something they needed to live and then get — for lack of a better word — screwed every day.”

The experience at the pharmacy, and a little COVID lockdown self-reflection, led Fowler to rethink her career goals. Ultimately it led her back to an option she’d previously ruled out. As an undergraduate, she had briefly considered studying to become a chemistry teacher but had dismissed it, thinking the job wouldn’t be challenging enough or would be one of those careers where you do the same thing day after day, year after year. But the more she dug into teaching programs, the more those preconceptions melted away. Looking at the coursework, teaching was clearly a dynamic, high-skill profession that incorporated not only subject matter expertise, but knowledge of child and adolescent development, the latest pedagogical techniques, and a high degree of empathy and emotional intelligence. She had recently moved from Iowa to Michigan when her husband got a job in the auto industry, so she reached out to ��-Dearborn about enrolling in the teacher certification program. While that program is a good fit for folks like her who already have a bachelor’s degree in a teachable subject, an advisor at the university suggested she also give the master’s program a look. It wasn’t that many more classes, and the idea of the higher-level courses and a higher starting salary sounded great. Fowler admits she was “petrified” for the first day of her Multicultural Education course. It’d been a couple years since she’d been in college, so she’d have to get back in the rhythm of studying and deadlines. “And I was a science and math person, so asking me to write an essay is about the worst thing you can do,” she says. “And that class was all papers!”

Despite those early nerves, it didn’t take long for things to feel like they were clicking. One of her early courses was all about assessments, where she learned innovative strategies for tracking what students are actually learning. Her course in adolescent behavior gave her a science-based window into what’s really going on in the young adult brain, how it impacts students’ behavior, and how you can best approach that as a teacher. Her disabilities class was so good that she seriously looked into what it would take to pivot to special education. Her student teaching post at Oak Park High School, teaching science to ninth and 10th graders, was everything anyone could want out of a capstone experience. There, she got to work with two cooperating teachers with completely different styles: A free-spirited biology and forensics teacher who had a blue mohawk for half the year, and a more traditional chemistry teacher who was a big believer in rules and procedures. Fowler says she’s taking away important lessons from each of them. From one, she’s learned a lot about how rules can help ensure that you’re treating all your students fairly. From the other, she saw that it’s OK to sidebar with the kids if there’s a teachable moment that’ll help them become “good humans.”

Fowler has learned a lot from her two cooperating teachers, who have two very different styles. Here she is with Oak Park High School's Peter Kohnen, a free-spirited teacher who teaches forensics and biology. Photo courtesy Natalie Fowler

And here she is with Debra Daniels, a chemistry teacher who believes that rules and procedures are key to creating fairness in the classroom. Photo courtesy Natalie Fowler

She’s learned some of her most valuable lessons from the kids themselves. “I think I underestimated how important the teacher-student relationship would be,” Fowler says. “Those first two weeks, you’re just observing, so you’re basically trying not to offend or annoy anyone. But they’re kids, so they’re curious, and after enough time passes, they inevitably come up to you and ask, ‘So, who are you?’ So you learn their names, you learn things about them, and they start to trust you. I think the biggest thing I learned is that kids just want someone to listen to them and respect them. You don’t always have to say anything or solve their problem. Some people would disagree with me, but I feel teaching them how atoms work — which let’s face it, can be boring — that's only part of what teaching entails. In the nine months you’re in these kids’ lives, what I really want is to help them be confident, and to take ownership, and be hardworking, and responsible, and accepting of varying viewpoints. That’s what will follow students outside of my door.”

The entire experience has given Fowler a valuable window into the kind of teacher she wants to be. For her, that’s a teacher who knows that a classroom is a place for both work and fun. A self-reflective teacher who uses her knowledge and creativity to make learning accessible to students from all different backgrounds and abilities. A teacher who, as she’s done this year, makes calls to kids’ parents not just when they’re in trouble, but when they’ve done something great. Next up, she’s set to take on one last hurdle — the state certification exam — before she starts to apply for jobs. Other than it being within reasonable driving distance, she’s not picky about the school. Wherever there are kids who need someone to teach them about atoms, and, on occasion, listen to their struggles, she’ll be proud to call herself a teacher.

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Story by Lou Blouin

Commencement

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Education

Off

Wed, 12/14/2022 - 16:34

After a false start to a career in pharmacy, graduating master’s student Natalie Fowler is finding her stride teaching high school science.

Graphic by Violet Dashi

This 4+1 program is giving students better options for careers in social work

lblouin — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 16:55:59 +0000

This 4+1 program is giving students better options for careers in social work lblouin Wed, 12/07/2022 - 11:55

��-Dearborn Health and Human Services senior Riley Day hadn't really considered a career in social work until she took her first couple classes in the subject and got hooked. After that, her previous goal of being a child life specialist, a very focused branch of pediatric health care, seemed a bit too narrow compared with all the options she’d have as a social worker. Day particularly loved the holistic approach that the field takes to supporting people, which is something she’d experienced firsthand at the family service agency she volunteered with while in high school. “I worked in the childcare center, and you’d be spending time with the kids when the parents were doing a parenting class or someone was helping them find some economic opportunities,” Day says. “The more I learned, the more I saw how everything in a person’s life is interconnected, and it’s not just one thing that can bring someone’s life back into balance. So how could I work in just one area?”

There was just one snag with Day switching gears. While ��-Dearborn has three versatile Health and Human Services (HHS) major concentrations, and some great courses in social work, the university doesn't formally offer a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) — the degree many students pursue when they’re looking to get into the field. However, shortly after Day started at ��-Dearborn in 2019, the university started offering a degree program with arguably more perks than a BSW. Through a partnership with the Ann Arbor campus, which has a top-ranked social work program, ��-Dearborn HHS undergrads could earn a U-M Master of Social Work degree (MSW) with just one additional year of study.

Here’s how the Human Services and Social Work 4+1 program works: During their first three academic years at ��-Dearborn, Health and Human Services students interested in social work complete their required courses for the Bachelor of Science in HHS with a Human Services concentration. Then, by March 1 of their junior year, they can apply for admission to the 4+1. If accepted, ��-Dearborn seniors take four graduate courses that count toward both the completion of their undergraduate HHS degree at ��-Dearborn and their U-M School of Social Work MSW. Then, after completing their bachelor's, students fully matriculate into the MSW program and can finish in as little as three additional semesters.

For Day, the 4+1 was a great fit. Now in the first semester of the program, she says her experience has been really positive. One of the things she appreciates — and which has also been a bit of an adjustment — is taking classes with older students who have more robust social work experiences, including many who have been working as social workers for years. “Some of my classmates have traveled abroad to work, they are married with kids, they moved here from other states to study, and I was feeling a little like, ‘I’m very much at the beginning of my career, my bachelor’s has not solely been in social work, and I’m still very much learning,’” Day says. “I think part of me was wondering if I was too young to be here, and that maybe I needed to get some more experience and then come back. But the flip side of that is it’s pretty amazing to have classmates with different backgrounds and so much experience, because they can speak to how things are in the places they’re coming from. I honestly feel like I’m getting so much more out of my classes because of that.”

U-M Associate Professor Katie Richards-Schuster, who’s been involved with the planning of the program since the beginning, says making sure the 4+1 students feel like they belong is something the program administrators always have their eye on. For example, while they don’t call out a student’s 4+1 status to the whole class, they do let faculty know when they have undergraduates in one of their courses. “We want our faculty to be prepared that students may have a lot of questions, so they may want to check in to make sure they feel confident or have what they need,” Richards-Schuster says. “Knowing that students might need a little extra nudge to participate, a faculty member may also want to find ways for them to speak up in class; for example, starting with pairs, then small groups, so it’s not always just one big class discussion.”

That’s a strategy Lecturer Grace Helms-Kotre has used effectively in her MSW courses, where she frequently asks students to write personal reflections on class topics. That provides students a chance to test drive and get feedback on their ideas in a more private setting, while giving her a window into how they’re doing both personally and academically. Day, who has Helms-Kotre this semester, says she’s really valued having that platform, and it’s helped reassure her that she deserves to be there. Regarding performance, the results have been definitive thus far: Richards-Schuster says faculty consistently report that 4+1 students, which include Dearborn HHS students and sociology undergrads from the Ann Arbor campus, are doing some of the best written and theoretical work.

Only a handful of students from Dearborn have enrolled in the program so far, but applications are showing signs of picking up in 2023. In many ways, Richards-Schuster thinks a slow start is probably a good thing, because there are always administrative and scheduling bugs to work out when you’re coordinating systems between two campuses. Based on the feedback of some of the early enrollees, they’ve also built out a more comprehensive set of programs to strengthen the cohort experience and guide students on admissions, financial aid and different tracks within the MSW program.

Day doesn’t mind being an early adopter/guinea pig. For her, the timing of the program launch was fortuitous, and she says she’s received a ton of support from advisers on both the Dearborn and Ann Arbor sides. She’s also starting to get more questions about the 4+1 from students coming up behind her, which bodes well for the future of the program. “I actually had a classmate ask me about it when I was applying, because she was kind of in the same boat I was in,” Day says. “She wanted to do social work with geriatric populations, but we didn’t have the BSW. Obviously, this gives you the option to get a social work degree, but being able to reduce the time and money it takes to get a graduate degree is huge. So I’m happy to answer any questions and be an ambassador, because I definitely think it’s a great option for a lot of students.”

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Are you interested in learning more about the 4+1 MSW program? Get more information and learn how to apply. Story by Lou Blouin

Accessibility or Affordability

College of Education, Health, and Human Services

Health and Human Services

Off

Wed, 12/07/2022 - 16:54

Launched two years ago, the program allows ��-Dearborn undergraduates to get a Master of Social Work from Ann Arbor with just one extra year of study. So how is the program going so far?

Health and Human Services student Riley Day is taking advantage of a unique program that is allowing her to get a head start on her ��-Ann Arbor Master of Social Work degree while still a senior at ��-Dearborn. Photo courtesy Riley Day

College of Business student Adrian Maloy juggles many roles to capitalize on the college experience

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 22:14:05 +0000

College of Business student Adrian Maloy juggles many roles to capitalize on the college experience Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 11/05/2022 - 18:14

Adrian Maloy is everywhere on campus. From dawn ’til past dusk at least four days a week, the accounting and finance student travels from the Combined Services Building to the Administration Building to the University Center to Fairlane Center to the CASL Building. It’s not always in that order, of course. But, with a campus footprint like that, you may have crossed paths.

Always on the lookout for business experience, the entrepreneurial thinker constantly searches for new titles and new ways to expand his network or develop skills. If you ask Maloy, he doesn’t feel he’s doing anything overly ambitious; he’s just enjoying college. He said there’s so much here — you just need to be open risks and development opportunities.

We recently spent some time with Maloy to see how he makes the most return-on-investment throughout his day.

8:21 a.m. Remembering the important things at Westborn Market.

I try to get up early so I can run errands for my grandma in the mornings, like grab a few things from the grocery store or pick up her prescriptions before I go to school. Today is a little different because I’m shopping for her birthday. I try to get her flowers at least once a month, but she prefers plants. Her birthday is today, so I want to find a plant I think she’d like.

It’s important to honor and care for those who come before you. Showing appreciation is essential. It lets people know that they are valued and that they’re never too far from your mind.

8:45 a.m. Looking for the positive during hectic times.

This morning my car was stuck behind a stalled garbage truck and I was worried about running late. It’s not my style and I feel a bit off my game. I just realized that I didn’t pack a lunch. I have my internship until 3, so I need to grab something.

Maybe it’s a sign the today’s going to be a good one after all. I realized I forgot lunch when I was still at the store. That’s a win.

10:07 a.m. Creating a better process, developing new skills.

I’ve worked as a Business Affairs intern since January. I rotate to the different campus offices like Public Safety, Facilities Operations and the Business Affairs office. The main project I’m working on now is for Facilities Operations. It’s a dashboard project that will help with reporting — there are seven managers in Fac Ops, and my goal is to create a way for them to easily read and review user reports. The dashboard project touches on a lot of data analytics and finding the right way to visualize data so that it’s easy to read.

Sometimes numbers can look like jibberish when you don’t know what you are looking at; so I’m working to create something for the data to make sense at first glance. The work I’m doing at this internship is helping me hone in on how to briefly and concisely present information in an easily understood way. For someone who plans to work with numbers to convey financial information, that’s a good skill to learn.

4:10 p.m. Helping others figure out this college thing.

When I saw that Counseling Services was starting a peer mentor program this year, I signed up and trained to be a facilitator. I listen in a group situation to college students who are facing emotional and mental obstacles. I wanted to do this because I know how that negative energy can take you away from your goals.

When I first got here for college, I had just gone through a breakup. We grew up together, and it was weird to not have that person there anymore. So I was in college, knowing I had a great opportunity to take, and not focusing on school. I went to counseling, they helped me through the process and I’m cool now. I’m in a good place.

I want to help other people get there too.

5:43 p.m. Giving ideas during a transformational time.

As business manager for the Michigan Journal student newspaper, I’ve been helping with getting us into the digital age. Last year the focus was on beginning a website; now we have one. Our goal at the Michigan Journal is to touch people’s lives and get as many eyes on the product as possible. I think a digital medium can get us there faster than paper.

Don’t worry — we aren’t getting rid of the paper version, but hear me out: The overhead cost is lower since there isn’t a physical product to create and deliver, it can always have the latest news since there isn't a cut-off time for digital, it can be shared to a larger audience and you can track the metrics. I think that would help us sell more ads, which would create a better and more profitable product. There is a market for paper and news is important, especially today. So I don’t want to come across as bashing it; I’m proud to be here. But it is important to regularly evaluate a product to make sure it matches the needs of the intended audience.

You can tell I’m the business student, can’t you?

7:35 p.m. Gaining other perspectives.

When I was structuring my degree, I chose to major in accounting to explore the inner workings of business on an intimate level and finance to explore it on a broad scope. I’m also minoring in both economics to focus on trends and psychology to understand the humanistic aspect on why people react the way they do to certain things.

Professor [Suzanne] Bergeron’s Economics Development course was an elective for me, but I wanted to take it because she’s got a great reputation as an econ teacher and I want to better understand economic development from across the globe; this class has really pulled all of my academic interests together. It’s really helped me understand how development works, the options available to foster growth and how global economies interact with each other to create policy.

But the most important thing I learned is: You can’t always throw money on a problem to fix it. There are other variables at work when building economies, like the importance of human capital and investing in the institutions that broaden the skillset and knowledge of people. Money is great; but it’s not always the answer.

9:36 p.m. Knowing that family comes first.

Usually I stay on campus after class to study for a bit in the library. But I’ll do that tomorrow. Grandma should still be up and I want to make sure I get to see her on her birthday.

Campus Life