Dan McDonough - March 2000

Spending the last six months at Boehringer Laboratories has been an incredible learning experience for me. Every day I learned more. I enjoy learning, and the people at Boehringer are eager to teach. This particular company is an extremely diverse working environment that really appealed to me. The people are wonderful, and they each bring their own level of expertise and experience to the company. I learned a tremendous amount from working directly with the people. Everyone treated me not as an intern, but as an engineer, and as a friend. Working for such a small company allowed me to see and work directly with every aspect of the business: sales and marketing, accounting, engineering, prototyping, and production. It gave me a much deeper understanding of the role of an engineer in a company.

I am currently attending Drexel University, pursuing a bachelor's degree in materials engineering and a master's degree in mechanical engineering. My projects at Boehringer were directly related to my interests and coursework. It was really exciting to be able to use what I learned in school and apply it to projects that directly affect the future of the company. I had the opportunity to see one of my projects develop from a collection of scribbled ideas on paper to a complete finished product. By working directly with the machinists, I was able to see how our ideas could be done, and which ones could not be done.

While working at Boehringer, I was given a list of projects to do. I was then given the freedom to pursue these projects in any way that I wanted. I was given the freedom to explore new ideas and be creative. I was given the freedom to really investigate and spend time with the current products, to gain a better understanding of how they work. This freedom was very beneficial and allowed me to learn a great deal more than I would have otherwise. If I needed help with something, I could ask, and people were eager to help.

This experience has really helped me grow as a person and as an engineer. I was exposed to all of the different products, and many different disciplines of engineering. I have learned much more than I expected to. I truly feel like I started as an uncertain student intern, and finished as an engineer.