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AMTC DIRECTOR: You have a pair of cutters?
MATT: You didn't have a pair of diagonal cutters,
there, do you?
I'm Matthew Davis.
I am 23 years old, and I'm a senior,
graduating with electrical engineering degree.
You want my criminal history?
[LAUGHING] I'm joking.
When I was a little kid, I really loved anything
like, remote control.
Remote control airplane, remote control car, I loved it.
I like tinkering around with stuff.
And once, I tried making my own submarine.
That didn't work out too well.
Well, I went to Diamond Regional High School.
It's a vocational school.
I was playing on get my license as electrician
and doing residential wiring, and stuff like that.
I did that for about maybe a year,
and I didn't really like it.
I definitely felt I could be doing
something more with myself.
I figured I would just try to give it a shot, back to school,
try something different.
So I went down to BCC and then started off there.
I started taking some engineering-related classes.
And then I kind of started liking it.
And then started picking a direction.
I figured since I had the electrical background,
electrical engineering to seem like a good way to go.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR: There's a lot of kids are coming out
of high school who still don't really know what's out there.
Bristol Community College received a grant
from the National Science Foundation.
It's an advanced technology education program.
Early on, I began working with the Advanced Technology
Manufacturing Center.
And the idea is to help prepare our young engineers
to go into the working world to become better technicians.
And one of the best ways to do that is through internships.
AMTC DIRECTOR: We're trying to be that gateway,
that connection to industry.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR: Education and business have to come together.
That program has to have both those aspects of it
in order for it to work effectively.
MATT: So these are all the different companies
that are in the ATMC building.
And where I'm going is actually Ocean Server.
The internship consists of working
with Ocean Server, which produces AUVs, which are
autonomous underwater vehicles.
It's pretty much a submarine that
can be sent into the water autonomously.
All you need to do is load up your mission.
INSTRUCTOR: So here, we just have a three waypoint mission here.
And at each particular waypoint, you
can control the vehicle's behavior.
MATT: And you send it to the water.
And it'll run its mission and return to its checkpoint.
STUDENT 1: You get a lot of data analysis experience.
You're working with other companies.
It's a lot different than the classroom.
The classroom you learn a lot of theory.
But here, you really get a hands-on experience
and do stuff that can help later on.
STUDENT 2: The experience so far has been great.
I have worked with different people-- people
from other companies.
That helped me because I had the confidence
during the several interviews that I had.
MATT: I dealt with running AUVs,
and also collect data that's off the AUV, which
could be side scan sonar data, which
is just a primitive image of the bottom.
You can get the optometric data, which
can allow you to do the topography of a pond
or anything like that.
So you can go like, the depth contours,
and stuff along those lines.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR: Are we going to talk about how you lost the AUV?
That was not--
AMTC DIRECTOR: Maybe.
MATT: We've had a couple incidences where it went down and didn't
come up for a little while.
So it made us nervous.
But it came back to us eventually.
And we able to process the data and go through that
and see how it worked and maybe where it
had errors and whatnot.
And then we figured out that running
the mission so close to shore might have been a good idea.
But I mean, it was fun.
AMTC DIRECTOR: An internship allows you to have experience working
with projects that require a deadline, that
require you to have an answer.
It's not just open-ended research.
And it requires you to have budget constraints.
Things that employers are interested that you
are sensitive to.
And when you drop those things on your resume, when
you drop those things in your interview,
then you start to realize that you've
got a lot more than someone who just went through a classroom
experience.
MATT: I used to work at--
you guys are going to get a kick out of this.
I used to work at Chuck E. Cheese.
Worked there for seven years.
I just quit last weekend.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR: Now you received a job offer?
MATT: Yes, I did.
PROGRAM COORDINATOR: Where are you going?
MATT: Teledyne Benthos, up in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
They're similar to what we're doing now.
So they looked at this experience and kind of like,
yeah.
It's kind of the direction we're looking.
So I want to become electrical engineer.
It definitely sounded like something I want to get into.
So I just pursued it.
And next thing I knew I had a full time position here.
And I'm excited, because it's a job and something I want to do.
Success story.
See?
Don't give up.
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