Andrea Wynn ('18)

You just finished up your first year at college. Where are you in school?

I’m at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. It was the last school I added to my list of possible colleges at the end of September in my senior year. One of my brother’s friends had attended, so I applied. When I was touring possible schools, it happened to be between two other schools I was looking at, so I decided to stop there for a couple of days. I really liked it, found they had all the programs I wanted, and they were a strong school that offered scholarships without compromising on the quality of the education. So, I decided to go there.

This past summer you were offered an internship?

Yes, this past summer I was offered an internship at Rockwell- Collins, which then went through a merger with United Technologies and became Collins Aerospace. I had a great experience. I was working under Government Systems on the Advanced Systems Team in rotary wing platform systems, which means helicopters. The Advanced Systems Team is a research and development team, which means we prototype new technologies for rotary wing aircraft which will probably be implemented n the next five to 10 years.

Does that include drone aircraft as well?

For now, we are focusing on manned aircraft, but we are also looking at ways to take as much work away from the pilot as possible. Things which don’t require their immediate attention, such as configuring a radio can be handled by these systems.

Was this a paid internship?

Yes, it was.

How did you find out about it?

I spoke with Career Services at my school. Collins recruits heavily from Rose-Hulman and Career Services thought it would be a good fit for me. I spoke with Collins’ representatives at the Career Fair and was able to land an interview.

What were you actually doing every day?

I was working on the Guidance Cue Display for a military helicopter, which helps the pilot stay on station when flying in formation. Our system is based on the location of the lead aircraft, rather than a visual on the nearest aircraft. This helps to compensate in bad weather or low visibility situations and helps to keep the aircraft from flying too close together. My display was intended to tackle some of those kinds of challenges.

Were you coding?

Yes, because my team is an R&D team, we work a little differently than most. I actually got really lucky. They sat me down on the first day and said, “Here’s roughly what it should look like, have fun.” I ended up designing it, coding it, testing it, and then implementing it as well. I was working primarily in WPF, which is Windows Presentation Foundation, and then for the implementation part I used a lot of C.

Did you already know these languages?

(Laughs) No, I had to teach myself to use WPF. I had some experience with C, but I definitely had to brush up on it.

Do you get school credit for this internship?

No, but it will be helpful to my studies and to eventual employment. I learned so much. It was 40 hours a week, plus I took a class while I was there. I was the only intern on my team, but there were about 700 interns at Collins during the summer, including people from the West Coast.

Do you plan to pursue another internship next summer? What advice do you have?

I’m definitely interested in pursuing an internship next summer, but probably not in aviation. I have some areas I want to explore. would like to intern at Google, if possible. My biggest recommendation would be to keep an open mind. I had low expectations going in, but I learned a lot and got more out of it than if I hadn’t been open to new experiences and discovery. I would say  f it is not a hardship that taking an unpaid internship doing something you are passionate about is worth more than a paid internship you don’t get much out of.

What will you be studying this coming year?

I actually have all four years planned out! I’m doing three majors and a minor. I’m going to be taking a very challenging schedule and hoping to do some independent research. I’ll be taking courses in artificial intelligence, programming language concepts, psychology, math, and computer science.

Any final advice to current seniors?

This is going to sound cliché, but follow your heart. If you are passionate about something and work hard, good things will come.