'Workforce Ready' NJIT Engineering Student's Summer Internship Fits to a Tea

Engineering student Bianca Hernandez wrapped up her internship at AriZona Beverage Co., putting forth all the skills and knowledge she has acquired at NJIT.

"Since being there, it's been a really great experience," said Hernandez. "Everyone was very welcoming, and this may seem very rare in terms of internships, but the people that I work with daily, they view me more as a coworker rather than an intern.

"They mean that, where it's very collaborative work, it feels like I'm already in the field," she added. "I could graduate tomorrow and be ready. Another great thing about this experience is doing something at work, and then remembering having done a lab or a specific lesson on something that pertains to it, which was cool to experience in real time."

Hernandez's official title was that of efficiency engineer intern in the maintenance department and would often go to the production floor because production and maintenance work hand-in-hand. "Maintenance kind of finds ways to fix and maintain a machine, while production makes sure that it's running," she noted. "It was cool going in between the two of those, and I would also sometimes watch what quality check is doing."

I could graduate tomorrow and be ready.

During her day-to-day, Hernandez completed three tasks: take work orders and check two specific machines - the case labeller and global shrink. With the case labeller, she made sure that the label wasn't stuck, making sure the sensors were accurately reading which cases had the label or not. Meanwhile with the global shrink, that machine wrapped plastic around the 12- or 24-pack, then went through a heating tunnel where it shrunk the plastic so that it was fitted. She made sure that the machine was operating properly, and all the settings were correct. If any of the settings needed to be altered, she fed information to the mechanics.

As Hernandez made her daily walks around the facility, she met a lot of her coworkers. When she had questions, she immediately asked for information. At certain points, she noticed that a lot of the facility's mechanics and line operators had trouble finding the right words in English to explain their responsibilities.

"I'm very social, so I would ask them, 'Hey, this machine you're working on, how does it work?' Then I noticed that they would have trouble finding the words. I could tell by their accent that English isn't their first language, and sometimes, as a Spanish speaker, you can kind of tell when someone speaks Spanish, so it was that sort of connection where I would say, 'No te preocupes, yo hablo español,' which means, 'Don't worry, I speak Spanish,'" said Hernandez. "Their faces lit up. And they're like, oh thank goodness because I can explain it a lot better now."

Those initial conversations played a huge role in her taking initiative and adding Spanish translations to the work orders she was in charge of taking care of everyday. "So to explain what a work order is, if one of the mechanics have to fix a machine, or say a part needs to be ordered, or if they did fix it, and they did it a specific way, they fill out a worksheet, which I actually revised for them this summer," she explained. "I revamped it, and I also provided Spanish translation because a lot of the mechanics, and a lot of the line operators, at least in this facility, are mainly Spanish-speaking. Sometimes they don't fill out the form correctly because they don't really understand what we're asking of them."

Hernandez, whose parents are from Cuba and Dominican Republic, appreciated the opportunity to speak Spanish in her first internship. "I'm a daughter of immigrant parents. However, they came here when they were a lot younger, so their English is great. They speak English very fluently. You wouldn't even know that Spanish was their first language," she said. "However, it was always encouraged to speak Spanglish at home, and when I came into this, I know conversational Spanish, and it's gotten a lot better, honestly, since I've worked here."

This summer, they're building an entire line from scratch, and she observed the whole process of how they built every machine. One of her projects was to create a manual on how to do a changeover setting, which is the switch of going from one size to another, so between a 12-ounce can versus a 32-ounce can.

I want to leave something that can be lasting.

While creating her manual, she also opted to create a Spanish version of it. "I made it in Spanish as well, and my mentor realized we've never really thought to do that, because no one that has been making those simplified manuals spoke Spanish," she said. "Also, it was always just kind of assumed that, everything else is in English, they can adapt to this too. It came about mainly because I was seeing it every day, these people that I'm interacting with every day I've said buenos días more than I've said good morning this summer because so many people speak Spanish more than English."

Hernandez, who's member of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and part of the sorority Delta Phi Epsilon, believes that NJIT professors help students understand their lessons through their lab work. "I feel NJIT is very hands-on once you get to your engineering courses. The math and science classes are hard, but I feel like it's worth it because once I've gotten to the engineering classes, I thankfully have had a good, positive experience with professors who care that you're learning," she said.

"I've had a good amount of professors that sometimes tell me, 'Hey, if you're having an issue with this, email me anytime. My office is open.' A lot of hands-on assignments. I like that a lot of my classes have labs, and they're focused more on us getting the experience of trying something, of practicing something that we were just taught in a lecture, not so much like a report," she added. "That's what I think is my favorite part about NJIT, in my experience with it and my major."

The Clark, New Jersey native decided to become an engineer to leave something that can be lasting, she said. "What do I want to do in my day-to-day life? What do I want my footprint to be on this earth? My main idea is that I want to make the world better, but I want to leave something that can be lasting," she said. "An engineer is the reason we're talking on a computer right now, and that's going to last for ages. So I think that sort of lasting impact, and that I can contribute to something, that's going to help people, help anyone really, and make that lasting impact."

Upon completion of her first ever internship, Hernandez left a lasting impact on her coworkers she saw everyday.

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