Student Stories
Software Engineering Co-Op Story: Campus Web Solutions
Alex Lapinson
Mechanical Engineering
What company or organization did you co-op with and where are they located?
CMTA located in Madison, NJ
How did you identify and apply for your co-op? Are there any specific resources you used to find the opportunity (i.e. Handshake, career fairs, other recruitment events)?
Networking through in-person connections.
What was the application process like?
A single interview and typical internship application including my résumé.
Tell us about your co-op experience. What types of tasks and projects did you engage in? Was there a particular project or part of the experience you learned the most from?
Daily tasks for me would typically be Refit drawing edits/review based on markups from my mentor. I worked on 6+ commercial office HVAC conversions in NJ and NYC. There was one project that I saw through from 0-50% completion and took on every necessary task someone full-time in my position would. That project is definitely what I learned from the most since I had the ability to rely on myself and struggle through some aspects to learn what tasks and edits were overall necessary.
In what ways did your co-op experience help you prepare for your next destination after Auburn?
It helped me greatly with branching out and meeting new people. Especially people who I share mutual connections with like profession or common interests. This experience also helped me with my time-management and organizational skills. Having such a big network to work on and people that depended on me, I needed to keep myself accountable in those regards.
In what ways did your coursework or other experiences at Auburn prepare you for your co-op work experience? Are there specific topics or skills you learned from classes that you put into practice on the job?
There wasn’t much coursework that prepared me for this internship other than psychometrics from thermodynamics.
Go to everything that the CDCR hosts. Especially career fares because you can get great experience even if you don’t get a job through that.