Hello, my name is Evice Bolton and I am a freshman pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree. I was introduced to the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) the summer before my senior year of high school as an intern in Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). Going into that internship I wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, I was leaning towards Mechanical Engineering, but thought that Electrical Engineering might also be interesting. When I first started as an intern, it was incredibly overwhelming and everything was new to me! Nonetheless, everyone was really nice and helpful, they took the time to teach me the testing and answered the many questions I had. There were trips to some really amazing companies, where we got to learn more about the real world uses of the products that are tested in the lab and how technology continues to advance. The UNH-IOL not only functions as a place where vendors can get their products tested, but it’s also a wonderful resource for providing students with pertinent information for their future career fields.
During my internship, the main focus was to learn physical layer testing. Everything was new to me, I learned how to capture waveforms with an oscilloscope, make reports for the different devices, and I started to learn how targets and hosts “talk” to each other. Even though at first it was overwhelming, over the course of the summer I started to get a better grip on the testing. As interns we also had the opportunity to go on site visits to different companies that worked with applicable technologies. We went to Verizon, Enterasys, Texas Instruments, Liberty Mutual Insurance and ca.All of the visits were really interesting and each had different things to offer. My favorite visit wasVerizon, while there we got to see some of the projects they worked on, everyone that worked there seemed really excited about what they did. Having the opportunity to see all the ways they are working to advance the products people use in everyday life was the main reason this was my favorite visit. The idea that the products they were designing could become part of everyday life was really exciting and someday I would like to be a part of that. These visits exposed us to real world applications of the technology areas we were learning about at the UNH-IOL. It was valuable to see the places where some of the amazing technologies we all take for granted are researched and designed.
I learned so much over the course of that summer, and it really helped me decide with confidence that Electrical Engineering was the major for me. It was certainly an amazing way to spend a summer, and I loved it so much that I decided I wanted to come back!
The UNH-IOL was a huge factor in my college decision; in fact it’s why I chose to go to the University of New Hampshire (UNH). I am now working in SAS, the same consortium I was in as an intern. I can honestly say that I love what I do, and learn something new everyday. It feels so good when I finally understand how to run a test and what that test actually tells us about the product. There have been some stressful times, having so much information to take in, especially in the beginning, but working at the UNH-IOL has been a very rewarding experience, made better by the fact that I know I’m getting real world training that will help me in my future career. The UNH-IOL is such an incredible place and I’m so thankful that I had the opportunity to be an intern last year, and that I was given the offer to come back and work through my college years!
Evice Bolton, Student Technician