My STEP Project involved exposure to a research environment including work on many projects, project management skills, and lab management assistantship. I worked as a Research Assistant over the summer in the Welding Engineering Materials Lab. I worked extensively researching the Weldability of Hyper-Duplex Stainless Steels, through which I was able to learn research methods, corrosion testing according to professional standards, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and many other skills. I also assisted throughout the lab, took on the role of Lab Manager, and began work on a project for Shell studying crack propagation through Duplex Stainless Steels.
I found this experience incredibly eye-opening and transformational as I narrowed down the many areas of study within the Welding Engineering field that I want to pursue in research. My interest in research was reaffirmed and widened. The professional connections I was able to make throughout the summer led to the rewarding expansions of my work, and will continue to prove rewarding in my future. I gained valuable insight into the research process and development of ideas that will pay dividends in my career. I grew an invaluable relationship with my mentor throughout the summer and gained his trust in working on my own in the lab.
The professor I work under trusted me with one of his projects that will last me through next semester. He also entrusted the position of Lab Manager to me, which gave me valuable experience in running, maintaining, re-organizing, and ordering supplies and equipment for the lab. I built relationships with the Building Lab Supervisor through experiences of broken equipment and improper procedures by a user of the lab. Solving those problems with the mentors around me taught me about how to consider safety and cost in engineering solutions, a very applicable skill as I begin to foresee my career taking shape.
The technical skills and processes I learned this summer were so unique– I have yet to meet another student in my class who has the experience I have gained. Spending time at the Scanning Electron Microscope at the Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis allowed me to see at an atomic level the factors that affect steel microstructures and physical properties. I was also able to refine my optical microscopy skills, learn some of the nuances of electrolytic etching, and metallographic preparation techniques such as grinding and polishing samples for analysis. I learned how to run microhardness tests and mapping, macrohardness tests, and instrumented indentation tests. Overall, the experience I gained this summer will prove beneficial in my remaining welding engineering classes as well as my career in the future.
This experience was transformational for me because it helped shape my career aspirations. I know better how to utilize my education to build the career I want. Research appeals so much more to me and the connections I was able to make through this experience will be very helpful in realizing my career. The field of welding engineering has many broad applications, and with a shortage of welding engineers, the opportunities in front of me are overwhelmingly endless. Through this experience, I was able to narrow down my interest within the field. I also expanded my interest in graduate school for materials science, rather than purely welding engineering.