Interns Build Resumes with Real-World Experience (Part 2)

This year four university students are getting their feet wet as summer interns and co-op students in three of Ayres Associates’ offices. Today’s post is the second of two installments introducing you to our current student staff.

Summer interns work from mid-May to mid-August and can be at any level in their college careers. Co-op students work a summer and a semester and need to have at least a junior standing. When working in the construction observation role, students document construction workers, hours, equipment, and work performed; measure quantities; do computations; and enter those numbers into the appropriate record-keeping system. Students who don’t work on construction assist engineers with a variety of design and reporting tasks.

This year we have two interns and two co-op students on staff, including the following students.

Trace Hubbard: Trace, pictured above, is a senior in civil engineering at Michigan Technological University in Houghton. This Green Bay native is filling a co-op position in our Green Bay office until the end of the fall semester. He’s spending lots of time in the Village of Denmark this summer, much of it on the sanitary sewer, water main, storm sewer, and roadway infrastructure for a 30-acre subdivision. “Things are fast-paced,” he said. “A lot of it is learning how things work best out in the field. We’re making sure everything is working right and is the way the client wants it.” What intrigues him about civil engineering is “the little things that everyone takes for granted that civil engineers make happen, like the roads we drive on and what happens when you flush your toilet.”

Zachary Sadowski: This native of Eagle, Wisconsin, is interning with the traffic engineering group in our Waukesha office. He’ll be a junior at UW-Madison this fall, majoring in civil engineering. Engineering runs in his blood – his father is an electrical engineer. Zachary had collected traffic data in a previous internship, and now he’s learning how to take data collected in the field and use it to help in the design of a project. “I’ve also been learning much of the business side, including budgeting, contracts, and amendments,” he said. “I was never aware just how important it was until I began working here at Ayres.” He’s enjoying the chance to work on a variety of projects, noting his internship “offers me a chance to dive in and help out.”

And what does Ayres Associates get out of hiring interns? Municipal engineer Craig Schuh says Trace functions as his eyes and ears every day. They talk daily, and Craig is always available to answer questions, but having Trace on site means Craig has time to keep other projects moving forward.

Internships benefit the company in another way.

Interested in an internship with Ayres Associates? Watch our Careers page for future openings.