Sean Kelch – Engineering Internship

I am Sean Kelch, and my internship is at Case New Holland in New Holland. My position is a member of the headers design team. This internship has taught me a lot about the engineering field and about what career choices would be best for me. Not only that but I have also met many amazing people who have put their own work on hold to help get a high school senior up to speed with many professional engineers with master’s degrees in their respective fields. My normal day is very interesting with a variety of tasks.

On a normal day, I could do many different things from software training to doing measurements on actual corn headers. First, I arrive at my internship every Monday thru Friday at 9:15 am and log onto my computer. Next, I check my email to see if I have any new projects or training I need to get started on. Then, I will open up CREO, Case New Hollands CAD program, and get started on the extensive training course. On Wednesdays instead of training courses I sit in on a header design review meeting on Microsoft teams. This is a meeting with up to 100 participants from various parts of the globe that come together and bounce ideas off each other to produce the best product by getting many different views on a project. On other days I start to work on my first project where I must create an assembly on CREO to model a corn header assembly cart. This internship has also taught me a lot about myself in addition to the engineering field.

I have grown quite a lot from this experience and all the people I have met. First, I have learned how important it is to get many different opinions in the engineering field because what you think the solution is there might be a better way to do it that a person not working on the project might see. Also, I have learned how important persistence is when solving complicated issues with unclear solutions. My career goals have also changed quite a bit from before this experience. First, I originally planned on pursuing only my bachelor’s in aerospace engineering. Now, I am leaning more towards going for my master’s in mechanical engineering and getting my professional engineer certification while I am getting my master’s. I also learned about agriculture engineering, which provides so many opportunities.  These experiences gave me many personal growth opportunities and have made this an extremely valuable experience.

These real-world experiences have helped me align my future to more easily achieve my goals. I have met so many amazing people that weren’t even part of the intern program that have helped me along the way and have shared their life experiences to guide me on my career path. I have grown so much because of it that I am now very excited to continue my academic career in engineering and maybe one day come back to Case New Holland. This internship has taught me more than any classroom could and will set me further ahead of my peers in college and in the real world.