The new Electromechanical Engineering program at OCC is already landing some students internships at Micron’s Boise, Idaho plant next summer. Professor Mike Grieb is the Chair of the Applied Technology Department. For those who don’t go to Boise for internships, he says there will be many other possibilities closer to home.
“We expect them to star working this summer and then finish their degree at whatever pace that makes sense to them… whether it’s working full-time and then coming back here part-time, or continuing full-time and then working part-time for the employers.”
However, Micron won’t be opening its doors officially until 2025, so what kind of jobs will graduates be able to land in the meantime? Grieb says there’s no shortage of career opportunities.
“A lot of different fields that are all automated that need these types of technicians and this type of skill set. So, we we're lining up a group of employers to come in in the spring and try to line up internships for anybody who has our one year certificate completed and we expect to see a pretty dramatic excitement from the industry.”
Griebadds a lot of returning students are coming back for the new degree program and many will likely graduate sooner because they have transferrable credits. One of them is Robert Tinsley from Liverpool. He already holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications Studies from SUNY Cortland. Tinsley instantly became interested in working for Micron when the company announced in 2022 it selected to build a chip fab plant in the Town of Clay.
“The position I got for the internship is a process tech which is heavily based on computers systems. So, I’ll be in front of a computer monitoring other systems and make sure that the systems are working accordingly. It’s not so much the hands-on position which is the equipment maintenance tech where they’re going to actually be working on the machines whereas I will be just monitoring machines and you know, they’ll have a lot of systems that will tell you if somethings wrong or something’s not working.”
Two other OCC Electromechanical students will join Tinsley at Micron’s Boise, Idaho US headquarters this summer. A total of 43 students were enrolled during the programs inaugural fall semester.