From Ambassador to Intern

Hello! My name is Eleanor Scott, and I have been working for the West Tennessee STEM Hub for over a year now. I could not have imagined all of the opportunities that I would be offered because of STEM Ambassadors. I started working as a STEM Ambassador during my Freshman year and worked a regular assignment with Rozelle Elementary, which was so much fun. After a couple of months, I had a chance to work an on-call assignment at the company Hyosung HICO. HICO is the largest producer of transformers in North America, and they like to put on STEM Days for some local schools. Hyosung HICO requested for an Ambassador studying Electrical Engineering to come and help them with a STEM Day.

I entered the HICO plant armed with Cubelets from the Lending Library with little knowledge of what was to come. I worked with the kids in the morning, teaching them the basics of electricity and robotics. Once that was over, my partner Destiny Bonds and I came face to face with the Senior Vice President of the company. He was extremely kind to us and suggested that we apply for jobs when we graduated college. In the brief time I had spent there, I knew I did not want to wait four years for that.

“Do you have any internships for underclassmen?” I asked.

Turns out they did, and that summer was incredible! As Freshmen, Destiny and I were employed as engineering interns, which gave us the chance to work along with engineers already in the field. I worked alongside the Senior Manufacturing Engineer, helping to implement a barcode tracking system for the company. I met so many kind engineers who were eager to help me learn more about the field of Electrical Engineering. I cannot thank Hyosung HICO enough for the job and STEM Ambassadors for giving me the opportunity to visit HICO in the first place.

This is the day that I asked for my first internship! Destiny and I are in the back right of the group.