News Article

Engineering contributes another WISE intern

 

For the third consecutive year, a student from the College of Engineering participated in the Washington Internships for Students of Engineering (WISE) Program. Chris Deal, senior in mechanical engineering from Jefferson, Iowa, was one of 11 engineering students from across the country selected for the nine-week internship in the nation’s capital.

Previous Iowa State WISE interns were Sarah Walter, BSME’07, in 2005 and Sasha Kemmet, BSEE’07, in 2006. Walter is now an engineer at Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Kemmet is a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State.

This annual summer program is aimed at helping students learn how government officials make decisions on complex technological issues and how engineers can contribute to legislative and regulatory public policy decisions. The National Science Foundation and the American Association of Engineering Societies fund the program, and engineering professional associations sponsor the interns. Deal’s sponsor was the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Deal arrived in Washington, D.C., on June 3 and says the interns participated in frequent meetings with officials from a variety of organizations. These included the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Patent and Trademark Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The interns also met with legislators and attended events on Capitol Hill.

A primary component of the program is for each student to research and write a policy paper on a topic of personal interest. Deal focused on global climate change policy pertaining to the advance of sustainable development through the transfer of clean energy technologies. In addition to his research, which included speaking to a number of experts in the field, Deal drew on personal observations he gained from a three-week study abroad program in China last May looking at biorenewables and energy.

The papers will soon be available online in the WISE Journal of Engineering and Public Policy. In addition, Deal says he will likely present his paper, “Climate Change Technology Transfer: Opportunities in the Developing World,” at upcoming conferences associated with ASME.

When he wasn’t in meetings or doing research, Deal was seeing the sights of Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City, and going to baseball games. “I am a huge baseball fan and hope to eventually make it to all of the major league stadiums,” he says. This summer’s itinerary included stadiums in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

Deal, who won’t return to Iowa State until the spring semester, is doing an internship this fall in Cedar Rapids at the Duane Arnold Energy Center, Iowa’s only nuclear power plant. After his graduation in May, Deal plans to begin graduate work in sustainable development. He has been selected to receive a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship starting in fall 2008. These scholarships are awarded with the purpose of furthering international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries. Deal will take classes in another country—Uganda, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, India, or Peru—although he won’t know which until fall.

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