Rose-Hulman Ventures

Educational Impact

In the unique and innovative environment at Rose-Hulman Ventures, students are eager to accelerate and broaden their capabilities. Student interns demonstrate their ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams, to understand professional and ethical responsibility and understand the impact of engineering solutions. We believe that team project work with an external client is one of the very best ways to teach and learn many of these concepts.

Just as it occurs in the real world, projects evolve. Students learn to adapt to the changing needs of the project in this environment. For example, a mechanical engineering project may evolve into electrical engineering components. The mechanical engineering student may perform an electrical engineering task. Or the project manger may recruit an electrical engineering intern to execute the task. Both scenarios result in a cross-technology experience that provides students with additional skills making them more valuable to recruiters.

Beyond Technical Skills

The use of technology goes beyond applying engineering expertise. Students learn about evaluating client needs and designing solutions. They are trained to communicate to technical and non-technical people in a manner clearly understood by both. Teams are challenged to clarify and defend technical solutions to the client’s chief executive officers, marketing executives, and project engineers.

Former Rose-Hulman Ventures student intern, Rachael Hannum, a 2007 biomedical engineering graduate, works as an engineer for Beckman-Coulter, a leader in developing health care devices.
"I love working at RHV and I feel that every student no matter what their background or major could benefit from working here," Hannum explained. "The experience at RHV helped me get my position at Beckman-Coulter." She added, "I think the biggest plus about working with people from different backgrounds is learning how to communicate. This gave me a huge advantage during recruitment since many times I had to convey engineering ideas to non-engineers in terms they understood."