I can’t believe this is the end of the internship; these past six weeks really flew by. It feels just like yesterday that I was meeting my group for the first time. These past six weeks have been so amazing, and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to participate in this program this summer. I am so proud of the work that my team was able to do and our final presentation and pitch we did this past Wednesday and Thursday. If you had told me six weeks ago that as a group we were going to get to know each other so well and accomplish so much, I would have been doubtful, but this internship was surprising on all accounts. It has been a real joy getting to know and work with these amazing people, and I’ll never forget the fun we had on a daily basis. I’m really going to miss interacting with them on a daily basis.
This past week was a whirlwind as we prepared our final presentations to the design studios and our pitch to the stakeholders, donors, and others involved with Rice 360. We made our final decisions regarding our suggestions, thus narrowing down all the work we did during the past five weeks. This was difficult, as we knew we only had a limited time to present all of our work, but we were able to narrow it down to what we deemed the core elements and most important to our overall message. From there, we divvied out the work, Sana, to do the walk-through disinfection unit technical project video, I to do the hand sanitizer station technical project video, and Krystal and Mwayi to present our pitch on Thursday. I’ve included the links to our two technical-based project videos below. We decided that we all should be a part of the presentation to the design studio, because this was our opportunity to present what we all achieved together to the ones who had given us our project and provided invaluable insight along the way.
On Tuesday, Dr. Volz led a workshop focused on pitch presentations and question answering skills, which allowed us to modify and improve our presentation before the big day arrived! Her advice was so helpful, and it really helped us ensure that we presented our technology in a concise manner that made sure to bring focus to what we considered to be our main points. This added to both our confidence that we could do it within the time limit, with so much information to share, five minutes is a short time, and in a way such that those with limited prior knowledge on our technologies could understand the problem context and the reasoning behind our solution suggestions.
On Wednesday, we had the opportunity to share all our work to the design studios. It was really great to hear all their positive feedback about what we had done, especially since they had a more significant background in the areas that we were researching, and it really helped get us in the mindset necessary to present the following day to a much larger audience.
Thursday was the last day of our technology work, and it was a great experience. Over 90 people joined virtually to hear from us about the work we had done. One of my favorite parts was the highlight video made by Alex, one of the TA’s, as it showed really how far we had come. Krystal and Mwayi did a fantastic job of presenting the walk-through decontamination unit, and we did a great job as a team with answering the Q&A. Through the Q&A experience, we were able to address the parts of our technology that may have been unclear, and we also got a lot of positive feedback. At the end of the day, my team was very happy with the work we had done, not just that day but also over the course of the internship.
Friday was the last day of the internship. I could hardly believe how quickly time had flown by. To start this meeting, we did a quick story circle game, where we went around and added a sentence to the original prompt, thus creating a funny story. The story we wrote as an internship group had a lot of Marvel undertones that had hints of our own internship experience as well. Next up was awards, my team won the People-First award due to our continued focus on our design’s user side. Overall, I was honored to be part of such a great, thoughtful, and innovative team that was able not just to work together but to have fun together. I’m certainly going to miss our two o’clock team meetings and our game days. Thank you to everyone who made this experience possible and supported my team and I throughout! Your dedication and support was hugely appreciated, and we couldn’t have achieved what we did without you!
Signing off one last time,
Kaitlyn Heintzelman