(237d) Attracting Sophomores to Careers in Process Control and Automation through a Winter Term Workshop and Targeted Internships

The fourth industrial revolution which includes artificial intelligence, automation, control, and big data are transforming all aspects of industry. An outcome of this technological transformation is a shift in the skills required for new and practicing engineers. Today many manufacturing companies are challenged to find engineers equipped with the skills needed to work in a manufacturing plant with modern controls and automation technology. In response to these emerging needs we have developed a program with targeted industrial internships in the areas of process control and automation which provide an avenue to introduce students to this field earlier in their education. The internship program includes an intensive training workshop that students complete before undertaking a sponsored internship.

The workshop, titled Systems Automation Springboard to Internships (SASI), is a three-week program taking place during the winter term with the goal to present students with the full spectrum of automation, from field instrumentation to enterprise control systems. Participating students were sponsored by companies, who paid the workshop fee, and offered the students an internship during the summer. The pilot workshop was offered in January 2021 and the second cohort just finished the workshop this January 2022. The target audience of the SASI program is second-year engineering students so we can introduce students to process control early in their education. The workshop is taught by a mix of instructors from academia and industry. The instructors from industry provide job specific examples and perspectives on skills-gap knowledge in control and automation. The workshop also provides an intensive hands-on experience in controls through lab exercises such as practice in preparing and interpreting PFDs and P&IDs, performing regression and fitting data to models, tuning controllers, and programming PLCs.

The value of the program is to improve student’s awareness of the control and automation field to enhance internship experience, and provide employers with the opportunity to attract a skill-specific engineering workforce. Feedback from the sponsor companies and students give high marks for the workshop. The success of the program is highlighted by the doubling of participating students offered internships in the two years that the program has been offered.