Summer Semester 2008

Directed Field Experience in Area of Concentration

Who would have thought that I would ever get a chance to actually complete an internship, let alone an internship within the plant where I work? This was awesome for me, not only would I be able to complete an internship, furthermore I would also learn more about the process guidance system, the work culture of both the chemical engineering branch [Technikbüro] and the electrical engineering branch [Elektrotechnikbüro] of the plant. For one of the chemical production specialists to use their vacation time to come to work and perform an internship was unheard of before. I might have been the very first to ever do something like that. The overall object of my internship was to use the newly aquired comparison software Power Generation Information Management (PGIM) to provide an interface for the Process Managers in production. This summary of production processes will become the prerequisite for the optimization, performance enhancement, the early recognition of process improvement possibilities, and the archiving of signal data from the processing plant. This project sounds like a lot, but it was the easiest of the two to make a reality. The second project, creating an interface between the SAP-DIA module and the PGIM-ASCII Scanner. My essay “The Troubles I had During my Internship” talks more about the real problems that I had with my second project. To summarize this class I will could say that It was challenging in one way, but could have been more challenging in others. The most challenging would be the amount of personal time I had to sacrifice to perform the internship, second most challenging would be that I had no help whatsoever in getting the projects done, or started. It was through my own initiative and hard work that made this internship so successful. Being able to show the management staff that I was worth a whole lot more that an average chemical production specialist, would be the most important outcome of this internship for me. Please visit my Practicum ePortfolio for more detailed information on how much I learned during the internship.

Learning Outcome Downloads

Principles of Training and Development in IT

This was another comprehensive course that teaches IT personnel management to prospective business leaders. I took the opportunity to research more about human resource management from a German prospective. My research for this class is also linked to the other research that I have done during the program to help me understand more the complexities that come with running my own business. My research objective was to find the right HRM strategy for a business in the start-up phase of its lifecycle. I used the concepts that I learned in this course to help guide my research so that I gain a better overall understanding of the human resource part of business management. Throughout the duration of this course I kept thinking to myself how nice it would be to finally have a job in the IT field. Learning how employees are treated in those companies that believe their employees to be long-term investments, made me feel left out. I want so much to have such a position.

Again, learning that some of these same companies spend a great deal of money on their employee’s development, made me ponder what it would be like to be on the receiving end of such spending. I wouldn’t want to do any less if I were boss, but as a HR manager we have to weight the cost of our employee development strategies against the return-on-investment in order to use these strategies efficiently.