Tom Ward - March 2009

I began working full time at Boehringer in September 2007 as part of an undergraduate internship program. I continued working there in a full or part time capacity depending on my class schedule until April 2009. Based on my personal experiences and testimony from individuals that have worked for many other companies, I have come to the conclusion that Boehringer provides one of the best engineering internship opportunities for motivated individuals that desire to substantially increase their knowledge and expertise in not only their chosen field of study but in many other as well.

Boehringer has a relatively small engineering department, which enables not only the full time engineers, but also the interns to work on a variety of important and relevant projects. I have heard internship horror stories involving students, who would be greeted at their desk every morning with a stack of “red-line” drawings. Their job was to sit at their computer all day and correct the electronic versions of the files to match the hardcopy, all day, for six months. This is not the case at Boehringer. During my employment at Boehringer I was able to work on project that included optimizing the packaging for an entire product line, “torture testing” new products and determining means by which they can be designed to be more robust, ensuring that products met the criteria to be distributed under FDA and CE guidelines, and updating and testing product software to name a few.

Interns at Boehringer are initially given relatively simple projects to work on and a rapidly introduced to more complex projects, until the department gains confidence in the intern. This system allows any intern, who is apt and hardworking, to work on any project that may arise in the department. This also creates an atmosphere in which interns are given projects and allowed to work on them with little oversight. The level of autonomy provided at Boehringer allows interns to develop essential skills that many engineers are not able to develop until after graduating and formally joining the work force.

While Boehringer possesses many great assets, the most important and most valuable are certainly Boehringer’s employees. They have created a culture of honesty, respect and integrity. Everyone at Boehringer is friendly, approachable, and more than willing to help with any problems that may arise. Everyone is aware that mistakes are made and that as long as they are analyzed and appropriately handled, everything will progress smoothly.

While Boehringer is a great place to work in my opinion, it is not for everyone. Individuals, who want to sleep at their desk or surf the internet all day at work, will find Boehringer to be a difficult place to fit in at. However, for any highly motivated individuals, who are interested in gaining vast amounts of real world experience, I would highly recommend applying to Boehringer.