By Kathy Williams.
Last summer, Nicole Beautz and Tyler Corum got to experience firsthand what it’s like to work in industry as an engineer through internships they obtained with help from the Tickle College of Engineering’s Office of Professional Practice.
Nicole Beautz
Beautz, a senior from Baltimore, worked as a quality engineering intern for Boston Scientific in Minneapolis. Her projects focused on five medical device products manufactured on site in the thrombectomy and wires assembly business unit, which included the production of catheters, guide wires, and other interventional cardiology devices. Her responsibilities included identifying and implementing effective process control systems to support the development, qualification, and ongoing manufacturing of products.
This was Beautz’s second internship; in her first, she served as a manufacturing and physical distribution engineer in the summer of 2020 at Proctor and Gamble’s fabric and home care plant in Lima, Ohio.
“I benefited greatly from these internships,” said Beautz. “They enlightened me on the many career paths a biomedical engineer can have.”
Beautz has been gaining firsthand experience in research as well. Since the fall of 2020, she has been working as an undergraduate research assistant in the Cardiovascular Biomechanics Laboratory under the direction of Assistant Professor Bryan Good. She is currently working on projects related to acute ischemic stroke modeling, forming, extracting, and analyzing blood clots in a model cerebral artery.
Beautz is involved on campus and shows her Volunteer spirit every chance she gets. She is currently serving as president of UT’s chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society, marking her third year on the executive board. She is also an Early Learning Center student educator, a biomedical engineering ambassador for the Office of Professional Practice, social events director for Alpha Omega Epsilon STEM sorority, and mentor for both the Society of Women Engineers and BMES.
Beautz is graduating with her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering in May and has received two job offers in the biomedical field, one of which came from Boston Scientific. She was also accepted into UT’s dual master’s program in business administration and biomedical engineering. She hasn’t decided which path she’s going to take after graduation, but she hopes to one day become an executive in a medical device company.
Tyler Corum
Corum, a native of Jefferson City, Tennessee, worked as a manufacturing reliability intern at Kellogg’s Pringles facility in Jackson, Tennessee. His project was to understand and improve the feedback system used by the Pringles conveyor system to allow the Jackson team to pack cans and single-serve cups more efficiently.
This was Corum’s third internship. In 2019 and 2020, he served as a building systems intern with Messer Construction Company and was assigned to new construction projects in Blountville, Tennessee, and at Vanderbilt University.
“It has been very rewarding to have the opportunity through these internships to apply and better understand mechanical engineering by seeing concepts I have learned in the classroom applied directly in the field,” said Corum.
Corum received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from UT in 2021 and is now pursuing his master’s degree in mechanical engineering through the Southeastern Advanced Machine Tools Network. As a graduate research assistant in the Polymer Composite Additive Manufacturing Lab under the direction of Professor Chad Duty, he’s working to determine the coefficient of thermal expansion values of large additive manufactured samples for tooling applications using digital image correlation. He joined the lab as an undergraduate in January 2021 and his research was with fiber measurement, compression molding, and thermal expansion measurements.
Corum is on track to graduate in December 2023. After graduation, he plans to work as a project team leader in either the manufacturing or defense industry.