Students at Frenship ISD pride themselves on reaching for and surpassing the standard of excellence. This past summer, three Frenship High School students took part in separate engineering internships at Texas Tech University. These girls are involved in engineering at Frenship but wanted to get a jump start on their college readiness and expose themselves to higher-level labs and research.
Juliana Gonzales worked in the chemical engineering field working under a research group, under Dr. Botte’s, called CASFER. She was also mentored under one of the of the CASFER members Dr. Dayana Donneys Victoria.
In her internship, Gonzales was tasked with testing for phosphorus and nitrogen by using different chemicals to create different solutions. The lab experience taught Gonzales many things including how to use a pH meter, conductivity measurer, turbidity measure, and utilizing ammonia testing to test for results.
Gonzales also created electrodes for some of the Ph.D. students in her lab. She spoke about her experience working with college students throughout the internship.
“My coworkers were very awesome people. They would break down steps to make sure I was grasping what they were telling me. I got a lot of hands-on experience and was able to use lots of tools in the lab.”
Jaleigh Hudzietz got the opportunity to work in the environmental engineering department at Texas Tech with Dr. Andrew Jackson and Jessica Lafond. She stated her internship experience was extremely beneficial not only for college readiness but beyond that.
“This helped me to get an idea of what an engineering job would consist of and the work it would take to get there.”
Hudzietz’s intern project was to research how well E. coli grows without oxygen. Her results would show how life could survive in oxygen deprived locations such as Mars. The E. coli strands can go through anaerobic (without oxygen) respiration by using nitrate or chlorate instead.
Kaitlyn Villarreal worked in the Electrical and Computer Engineering College with Dr. Kai Wu, Ph.D. Her internship program focused on research, learning how Ph.D. students and professors format their design process. She learned that college research isn't all lab work and performing experiments, there is a lot of research that must be done before jumping into the lab.
“Most people don't think of reading papers and planning for months when it comes to lab research, but it's the most important part of the process,” said Villarreal. “This helped me realize that I need to take my time to read and learn materials instead of trying to jump straight to building or experimenting.”
Through her internship, Villarreal aided Dr. Kai Wu, Ph.D. and other doctorate students in researching Magnetic Particle Spectroscopy (MPI). They are hoping to create a device that basically works like a miniature MRI. They hope that one day we can replace the huge MRI machines with the smaller more accurate machines to help diagnose cancer and other diseases.
These students plan on continuing their education in engineering and credit their confidence in their decision to the experience gained at Frenship and through these amazing internships.