Alyeska summer interns share experiences working on TAPS

 

Alyeska’s 22 summer interns spent their last day on the job offering presentations about their summer work experiences, sharing photographs and project overviews to highlight achievements from their 12-week assignments.

This year’s interns arrived at their worksites in late-May. They came from schools as far away as the East Coast, and also from colleges in Alaska, and worked in departments ranging from oil movements to accounting to engineering.

Mark Banner, a senior at Brigham Young University in Utah, was assigned to Facility Engineering in Valdez. He got first-hand engineering experience while redesigning the Valdez Marine Terminal’s fire hydrant system.

A self-described “Valdezian” who was born and raised in the small Prince William Sound town, Banner also served as a tour-guide for the three other Valdez-based interns.

“It was great to show the others around Valdez,” said Banner, a mechanical engineering major. “We’ve spent time running around on four-wheelers and fishing. It was fun to show them what life is like here.”

Banner and his three counterparts – Jared Tee, Sam Senter, and Andrew Faulkner – handled other projects for the Valdez engineers too, including studying tank snow removal.

“I didn’t look at them as interns,” said Scott James, who supervised the foursome. “I looked at it like I got four additional engineers for the summer. They were fantastic employees.”

Alyeska matches interns to departments and projects that expose them to the variety of work on TAPS. Two engineering students from the University of Alaska Anchorage worked with the Automation Team. Their assigned supervisor, Todd Church, said interns Sarah Aiken and Yoshi Okamoto provided significant contributions to the work managed by the Automation Team.

“Sarah and Yoshi are impressive,” said Church. “They’re smart, they work fast, and they’re excellent communicators. They bring a real willingness to get involved, a strong desire to engage, and they both constantly looked for new learning opportunities.”

All the interns talked about how refreshing it was to participate in real work and be treated like important members of their work groups.

“The first thing that comes to mind when you hear about a summer internship is ‘right, they’re going to assign me all the paperwork that the other engineers don’t want to do,’” Banner, pictured at right, said. “But it’s been amazing how we were able to just hit the ground running. We all really enjoyed the fact that we got to do hands-on work.”