Photo from my internship in the Arkansas Water Resources Center lab, one of three technical internships I completed during my undergraduate experience.

Author: Kendele Kramer | Major: Biological Engineering | Semester: Spring 2023

This honors research was done by me, Kendele Kramer, under the mentorship of Dr. Brian Haggard and in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering. My major is Biological Engineering, and I graduated this semester (Spring 2023). I plan to work as a Civil Engineer at Crafton Tull, an engineering firm based in Rogers, AR.

My research was focused on writing about the three internships that I had during my undergraduate career. Historically, the Biological Engineering Department has required students to do an engineering design project or traditional research project to fulfill their honors requirements. However, I noticed that many of my peers were dropping honors during junior and senior year in favor of dedicating their time to engineering internships with companies that may hire them after graduation. I researched the benefits of engineering internships and came to the opinion that they have just as significant of an impact on undergraduate students as traditional research and design projects. They also boast the additional benefit of allowing industry-focused students to learn what the workflow is like within an engineering firm and discover if a particular place of employment is a good fit for them before committing to a full-time position. Overall, I proposed that the department create a thesis pathway for engineering students to write about their internship experiences using reflection and discussion questions. Then, I set out writing my own thesis, tying my internship experiences back to the things I learned on campus and explaining what I learned in each position.

I worked with Dr. Haggard on my freshmen engineering project in the First-Year Engineering Program Honors Research Experience course. He has also served a mentor and my academic advisor since. Therefore, it was easy to choose him as my honors thesis mentor, and he was happy to accept the position.

My objective for my thesis was to describe the value of my engineering and technical internships and coursework and how they have shaped my future career in Biological Engineering. I developed criteria for reflecting on my internship experiences in the form of discussion questions and then completed the evaluation process and drew conclusions about my key takeaways from the engineering industry, which were (1) it is necessary to check work through a formal quality assurance and quality control process, (2) there any many types of careers and paths to make an environmental impact, and (3) engineering economics are highly important to any project or company.

I also learned about myself and what I wanted from my future career. I have since accepted a role with a land development consulting firm. This will involve grading sites and developing plans to deal with water that falls on properties that are being developed to minimize negative impacts on local hydrology such as stream erosion and flooding. I believe that it will combine many of the things I enjoyed from each internship, such as being on a team with many young engineers, having a dedicated mentor to ask questions, and learning new computer software. I am excited to begin my career and am grateful that my three internship experiences allowed me to find out what kind of work I find fulfilling while pursuing my degree.

Initially, I was nervous about defending my thesis, but my mentor was helpful in reviewing my slides and reassuring me that everyone on my committee was on my side. I chose to include Dr. Scott Osborn, one of my professors from the Biological Engineering department, and Dr. Karl Schubert, associate director of the Data Science program. Dr. Osborn has always been a great teacher to me, and I knew that he would be able to deliver a good critique of my work in a way that would be very constructive to my thesis. Dr. Schubert has previous experience mentoring students that have completed an internship thesis through the Data Science program. Both were amazing committee members and gave great feedback on things that I could edit for clarity or add to expand my thesis. I was able to take most of their suggestions. I also made note of other suggestions for future students in the engineering program that decided to do an internship thesis, such as journaling throughout their internships instead of trying to remember what they learned after the fact, which was a big challenge for me. Overall, all three of my committee members agreed that my work was worthwhile and that future students in our department should have an internships-based thesis option! I am happy to leave behind this legacy at the University of Arkansas. I am so thankful to the Honors College for funding this project, which gave me freedom to work hard on it this semester without any financial concerns.