Internships have become a must for college students; without the work experience they provide, the post-graduation job search is significantly more difficult. But it’s not enough to simply get an internship. You also need to impress the employer during your time there.

Here are 10 ways to get the most out of an internship:

1. Know what to expect. Generally, the idea behind an internship is to give you some basic exposure to day-to-day work in your field. In most cases, you will not be doing glamorous, substantive work; you’ll be making other people’s lives easier. This means you may get stuck photocopying, filing, arranging meetings, and completing other tasks that may strike you as drudgery. In exchange, you get exposure to the field and work experience to put on your resume.

2. Gain trust early on. If you excel at the boring tasks and do them cheerfully, you may be given more interesting work. Now, you may wonder what being good at photocopying has to do with your ability to do, say, independent research. Here’s the connection: When you come in as an intern, you haven’t proven yourself in the work world. But if you do a great job on the boring work, you’ll show that you pay attention to detail, follow instructions, and care about quality. Keep up that track record, and eventually someone may let you try something more interesting. But do a bad job on the basic stuff, and no one will trust you with anything more advanced. So it’s important to go into the job determined to do every task well, no matter how menial.

3. Pay attention to the office culture. Observe how others in the office act, and mirror that. For instance, if employees modulate their voices when others are on the phone, modulate yours. If they’re compulsively on-time for meetings, you should be compulsively on-time, too. Lots of little things like this will help you appear professional. And while they may sound small, they’re likely to help you stand out compared to other interns.

4. Focus. Don’t use social networking sites (unless it’s part of your job) or text with friends throughout the workday. You may be confident that it doesn’t distract you or affect your work, but experienced managers have watched enough people to be confident that it does.

5. Take your work seriously. In school, if you made a mistake on a test or paper, it only affected you. In many jobs, mistakes are much more serious. If you do make a mistake, make sure you handle it correctly.

6. Ask for feedback. Every so often, ask your boss how you’re doing. What could you be doing differently? Make it easy for her to give you input that will help you grow.

7. Learn from your co-workers. Ask them about their own careers. How did they get into the field? What do they like about it? What do they find challenging? What advice do they have for you? Most people love to talk about themselves and will be flattered that you’re asking about their experiences. Best of all, it’s likely to make them want to help you.

8. Dress appropriately. There’s no “intern exception” in the dress code, and yet I’ve seen interns come to work wearing flip-flops, ultra-low-rise jeans, visible bra straps, and worse. If you look like you're dressing for a class rather than a job, you’re signaling that you don't take your job seriously.

9. Ask for advice. Talk to people about your career plans. Tell them you'd love any advice they have, either now or in the future. Your co-workers can be helpful to you by telling you about job leads, recommending you for a job, and helping you consider various career choices. Though most people are happy to offer this kind of help, they might not offer it if you don't explicitly ask.

10. Say “Thank you.” Talk to your manager about what you’re getting out of your internship, and thank her for giving you the opportunity to work there. We all love hearing the occasional expression of appreciation, so don't be shy about offering it.

Name:  Babak Vint

Internship, Co-op or Research Site:  Beck Radiological Innovations

Location of the Organization (City, State):  Halethorpe, MD

Title of Your Position:  Biomedical Engineering Assistant

Major(s)/Minor(s):  Mechanical Engineering/Computer Science

The thing I have enjoyed most about this position is the sense of having contributed to medical technology.  It would be simply ideal if medical technology was cheap and accessible, because it would drive down the cost of healthcare.

CSEE graduate student Asmita Korde will present a paper on her research with Professor Tinoosh Mohsenin tomorrow at the the SPIE Defense Security and Sensing Conference in the Baltimore Convention Center. Asmita was a UMBC CWIT Scholar and received a BS degree in Computer Engineering in 2011. She is now finishing her MS degree at UMBC in the Electrical Engineering program.

Her paper, Detection Performance of Radar Compressive Sensing in Noisy Environments, describes research done in collaboration with her mentor, Tinoosh Mohsenin, and Damon Bradley of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Here is the abstract.

In this paper, radar detection via compressive sensing is explored. Compressive sensing is a new theory of sampling which allows the reconstruction of a sparse signal by sampling at a much lower rate than the Nyquist rate. By using this technique in radar, the use of matched filter can be eliminated and high rate sampling can be replaced with low rate sampling. In this paper, compressive sensing is analyzed by applying varying factors such as noise and different measurement matrices. Different reconstruction algorithms are compared by generating ROC curves to determine their detection performance. We conduct simulations for a 64-length signal with 3 targets to determine the effectiveness of each algorithm in varying SNR. We also propose a simplified version of Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP). Through numerous simulations, we _nd that a simplified version of Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP), can give better results than the original OMP in noisy environments when sparsity is highly over estimated, but does not work as well for low noise environments.

About the program:

The Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics announces the Undergraduate Mathematics Biology Training Program (ubm@umbc.edu) supported by the National Science Foundation. At the core of this program is the belief that modern scientific problems demand multidisciplinary approaches, and that cross-disciplinary training will accelerate discovery and prepare students to be scientific leaders in the 21st century. Our innovative program will provide two years of research training for undergraduates working on projects at the interface of biology, mathematics and statistics.

For student candidates:

The goal of this program is to prepare undergraduate students for graduate study and careers in biomathematics, biostatistics and fields that require a strong background in computational approaches to biological problems.

Apply NOW!

Dr. Soobum Lee joined UMBC in November 2012. He is one of the leading young scientists on energy harvesting technology and obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2007. He worked at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), at the University of Maryland as a post doctorate researcher, and as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame.

His main research interests include energy harvester design, topology optimization, robust design, and reliability based design optimization. He is the author of more than 40 peer-reviewed publications. He was awarded the 2009 highlight of collections by Smart Materials and Structures (IOP publishing) and the best paper award by the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineering (KSME) in 2007. His development on energy harvesting was acknowledged by several science news websites:

• http://phys.org/news/2011-04-energy-harvesting-skin-power-air.html
• http://powerelectronics.com/energy-harvesting/dont-let-those-ac-vibrations-go-waste

His recent research activities include robust design of (non)linear vibration energy harvester, multifunctional energy harvesting skin with structural health monitoring capability, and multiple practical applications (e.g., battery-less tire pressure monitoring sensor (TPMS), energy harvesting human implant).

Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/sbomy100/, http://me.umbc.edu/dr-soobum-lee/

CV: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~sblee/CV_SLee_Update_Jan2013.pdf

Graduate Research Assistant opportunity: 

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~sblee/ad_student_Slee.pdf

The UMBC Office of Institutional Advancement has extended its search for a Web Designer/Specialist. The incumbent will take an active role in the department’s website development. Specific duties include: performing hands-on web/interactive design, print and production work; developing and delivering projects in a timely manner; and performing other duties as assigned.

This is an entry-level position that requires a Bachelor's degree in web design, graphic design or related area. One year of professional experience in design, development and production of interactive marketing communications preferred. Proficiency in HTML5, CSS, Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office, mobile/responsive web design, browser compatibility and accessibility standards required. A working knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, WordPress, Final Cut Pro, interactive charts and graphs, blogs, wikis, social media, analytics, HTML emails, and user interface design desired. Experience with higher education and/or a digital/creative agency a plus. Additionally, the ideal candidate will be a team player, positive self-starter and detail-oriented designer who is able to produce work that is current and polished. He or she should enjoy working with clients, have a sincere desire to help meet their communications goals, and be able to assess strategies to help create the most effective and responsive digital communications. The ideal candidate must also have the ability to learn new skills independently, work within the development cycle for complex web initiatives, and manage time to meet aggressive deadlines.

For best consideration, submit a cover letter including salary requirements, resume, and three non-returnable samples and/or URLs by May 10, 2013 (resumes will be accepted until filled) to: UMBC Creative Services, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Administration Building, 8th floor, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, ATTN: Design Director, Email: Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

The UMBC Office of Institutional Advancement has extended its search for a Web Designer/Specialist. The incumbent will take an active role in the department’s website development. Specific duties include: performing hands-on web/interactive design, print and production work; developing and delivering projects in a timely manner; and performing other duties as assigned.

This is an entry-level position that requires a Bachelor's degree in web design, graphic design or related area. One year of professional experience in design, development and production of interactive marketing communications preferred. Proficiency in HTML5, CSS, Adobe Creative Suite, MS Office, mobile/responsive web design, browser compatibility and accessibility standards required. A working knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, PHP, WordPress, Final Cut Pro, interactive charts and graphs, blogs, wikis, social media, analytics, HTML emails, and user interface design desired. Experience with higher education and/or a digital/creative agency a plus. Additionally, the ideal candidate will be a team player, positive self-starter and detail-oriented designer who is able to produce work that is current and polished. He or she should enjoy working with clients, have a sincere desire to help meet their communications goals, and be able to assess strategies to help create the most effective and responsive digital communications. The ideal candidate must also have the ability to learn new skills independently, work within the development cycle for complex web initiatives, and manage time to meet aggressive deadlines.

For best consideration, submit a cover letter including salary requirements, resume, and three non-returnable samples and/or URLs by May 10, 2013 (resumes will be accepted until filled) to: UMBC Creative Services, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Administration Building, 8th floor, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, ATTN: Design Director, Email: Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

The following full-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!

9258006 - Account Manager - Outside Sales - S. W. Betz Company, Inc.
9257992 - Analyst - Metron Aviation, Inc.
9256367 - Jr. Software Developer - Skyline Technology Solutions
9257977 - Production Engineer - Telarix, Inc.

The following part-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!

9257959 - Data Assistant - George S. Ingalls, P.A.
9257925 - IT Technical Support - Linwood Children's Center
9257956 - Birthday Party Hostess - Thumbs Up Party Planning
9257953 - Mental Health Companion - Help in the Home, LLC