nternship with Larimer County

My name is Colin Geminden and I am a graduate from CSU with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. In the summer of 2016, I received an internship with Larimer County department of engineering. The internship was for pavement inspection, which consisted of driving all around the county and inspecting specific sections of pavement and entering the data collected into a database. The pavement could be asphalt, or unpaved, like a dirt road in the mountains. This is done to provide the county with information that will lead to the decision of which roads to repave with their available funds. I learned a lot about teamwork, as I had to work with a partner. I learned all the back roads in Larimer county, got to spend some time in the mountains, and towards the end of the internship, got to inspect culverts. I very much appreciated the investment other employees at the county provided to the interns. I could see the level of intricacy involved with an engineering project and got to meet some very experienced engineers. I highly recommend to incoming engineers to find an internship at some point during your college experience. Thanks to this internship and good academic performance, I landed another internship with the DIA.

Internship with Denver International Airport (DIA) in progress

During the summer of 2017, I had the privilege of working at DIA which is now DEN. Denver International Airport was a great place to work. I could shadow project managers and go to the construction sites on the airfield. Whether it be runways, taxiways or service roads. I also attended project update meetings, conducted by the project managers. After going to these meetings for 10 weeks, I have come to understand the importance of communication and coordination in engineering. I was also able to do some design work. At DEN, most of the design work is contracted out, but there were a few in house design projects that I helped design, including a service road reconstruction project and a smaller one that I coined as the AOB Parking Assessment. This is one I hope to see implemented at DEN by the end of the year. Not only did I get lots of engineering experience, but I got to work with awesome people. I even got to shadow other airport departments, such as operations, safety, and the FAA. I even got to go up in the FAA control tower, a tour which I organized. There were lots of intern events (I was one of 17 interns working at DEN in various departments). Events included a Rockies game and meeting the CEO and EVP of DEN! It was the best experience I have had so far, and has definitely sparked my interest in joining DEN as a long time employee.