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With only a few weeks left until summer, Katie Hutton began to feel anxious. As a mining engineering and German double major, she knew securing an internship would help set her apart when looking for jobs after graduation. Typically, mining engineering students find internships in the fall semester, but because Hutton enrolled in the program during the spring semester, she was scrambling to find an internship.

But then a chance conversation with her faculty adviser, Jeffrey Kohler, the George H. Jr. and Anne B. Deike Endowed Chair in Mining Engineering, opened a door for Hutton.

“Dr. Kohler asked if I was still looking for an internship. He said he knew an alum, Pete Merritts, who was looking for an intern. Dr. Kohler told me if I was interested, I could meet with Mr. Merritts the following week, so I did,” she said.

Kohler, as the chair of the undergraduate mining engineering program, cultivates relationships with alumni and leaders in the mining industry, like Merritts, who is the president of the Northern Appalachian Division of Corsa Coal Corporation, based in Somerset, Pennsylvania. But Kohler helped out more than just by making connections, says Hutton.

“This was my first real interview with a mining company, so I was very nervous. Dr. Kohler was very helpful in getting me prepared. He told me what was appropriate to wear and to expect. He offered a lot of support and made sure I was ready,” said Hutton. “And the interview was actually very fun. We talked about mining and real-world applications of some of the topics I had learned in my classes.”

Merritts hired Hutton as an intern in the summer of 2015 and took the approach of educating her about the coal mining industry as a whole.

“I put myself in her shoes, remembering what it was like when I was going into my junior year in college. I had a few internships with Bethlehem Mines Corporation, and those experiences really did help increase how much I learned in class. You can really relate more to what you’re learning in class once you see it in practice,” said Merritts. “As she takes more mining courses, I’m hoping she can say ‘Okay, I went to a surface mine. I saw them doing contour stripping. I saw them running the highwall miner. I saw something in a textbook that I’ve seen firsthand, and now I can relate to it better.’”

Building experience and knowledge

Hutton was able to spend time at each of Corsa Coal’s Northern Appalachia operations, where she got exposure to surface mining, underground mining, coal preparation plants, water treatment facilities, and reclamation activity. 

“It was a really good experience,” says Hutton. “At first it was introductory, but later in the internship, I was getting involved with more in-depth activities.”

One of those in-depth activities was a project to survey, or estimate, the tonnage of coal in a seam by hand.

“There are several ways to survey, and I had heard about how to do it by hand but had never actually done it. Whenever you’re exploring for ore bodies you’d want to mine, you’d do a calculation to find out how much coal is there. I had to get data points from a coal pile using a handheld GPS receiver, then upload that information into AutoCAD modeling software to calculate tonnage.”

Completing projects like this during internships not only helps students feel more confident and build practical skills but can also serve as talking points for future job interviews.

“When it comes time to hire a new employee, recruiters will be looking at grades and school activities, but they’re also going to look hard at students’ practical experience,” said Merritts. “Everybody wants a graduate who has experience from summer work, so they have a good understanding of actual operations and engineering.”

Peeling back layers of the complex world of industry

Internships offer students a chance not only to see real-world applications but also affords them the opportunity to see the bigger picture of how work gets done at an efficient, large-scale operation.

One surprise for Hutton was seeing how much effort goes into complying with mining permits, which are regulations under which work must be completed. Mining permits outline how companies must complete work to meet federal and state regulations related to things such as utilities, floodplains and waterways, geologic hazards such as landslides, and endangered species protections.

“Seeing the mining permits was such a good experience, and especially to see how much work goes into staying in compliance,” she says.

Understanding the context in which mining work has to be completed gave Hutton a realistic picture of mining operations.

“Some of my mining teachers have said, ‘Whenever you open a mine, you have to think about closing it,’ and I got to see that in practice. I enjoyed being able to see how Corsa managed its operations from end to end, and how much thought was put into where to put your coal pile, where to put your waste, how to reclaim land using topsoil and planting trees, and how to test and treat water,” she said.

Another unplanned benefit for Hutton was being able to participate in business meetings with a potential vendor for Corsa Coal.

“Corsa Coal was discussing utilizing a new piece of equipment for cleaning very fine pieces of coal. I was able to sit in on business meetings and saw negotiations around leasing versus purchasing, how the machine would be run, and the financial considerations. It was very interesting to see the financial side of the business operations.”

Penn State connections around every corner

From the moment she first set foot in Corsa Coal’s offices for her interview, Hutton got a glimpse into the value of a Penn State degree—and what many Penn Staters go on to accomplish.

“Many of the people I met throughout the summer were from Penn State,” she said. “It was great for networking and hopefully for finding jobs and internships in the future. Everyone was excited to hear about what professors were still here, what classes I was taking, and what I was learning about. It was fun to have something in common with them, and it made my step into the professional world easier by having something in common with these people.”

Merritts can attest to that, which is part of the reason he wanted to offer an internship to a Penn State student, he says.

“Penn State has one of the top mining schools in the country. I changed jobs a few times in my career, and every step of the way, when someone saw a Penn State mining engineering degree on my résumé, it made a difference,” he says.

Going out with a bang

“I got to see the engineers shoot off a blast on one of the surface mines, and they let me press the button to initiate it. After I pushed it, around 10,000 pounds of explosives went off. That was really cool,” she says. “Overall, the internship was a fun and rewarding experience, and I’m excited to branch out and find another internship next summer working with a different commodity.”

In the middle of a wide open plain in the panhandle of Oklahoma, Penn State student Brad Guay squints as he peers at clouds several miles in the distance. If the rotation is just right and a cloud walls starts protruding downward, it will mean that the 500-some miles he and 11 other Penn State students drove that morning will not have been in vain. If they witness a tornado, their day was a success.

For ten days this summer, Guay and 11 other members of the student organization PSU Storm Chase traveled the country in search of severe weather—covering 5,700 miles and 16 states in only 10 days.

The trip was not for entertainment, but rather, it served as a way to apply forecasting techniques they had learned in their meteorology courses.

“Storm chasing is all about using our forecasting skills to be able to find storms. It’s learning how to forecast better. And it’s also seeing concepts from meteorology textbooks come to life when watching storm develop. You can see a vortex tilting, and other concepts we learn about in class,” says Guay, who is president of PSU Storm Chase.

Safety first

Even though weather can change drastically in the span of a few hours, the club spends months planning for their journey. The club regularly gets feedback from their adviser, Bill Syrett, TITLE, and to prepare for storm season in the summer and their annual chase trip, they bring experienced storm chasers in for guest speakers—such as Matt Kumjian, [TITLE], Yvette Richardson, [TITLE], and Paul Markowski, [TITLE].

“What we typically focus on is the dos and don’ts of storm chasing, and how to be safe. Sometimes there are little tips we try to give, like the driver should never look at the sky, because being distracted is not a safe way to drive. I’ve been really impressed with PSU Storm Chase’s level of conscientiousness and dedication to being responsible,” says Markowski.

Escape routes top the list of “must haves” for storm chasing, says Faith Eherts, a senior majoring in meteorology who participated in the chase this summer.

“There aren’t always a lot of roads where storms hit, so you have to plan your escape routes well. We always make sure that wherever we’re going, we have a route east, south, north, and west,” she says.

That careful planning ensures that the students can stay out of harm’s way while still being able to see some of nature’s most beautiful meteorological phenomena.

Staying one step ahead of the storm

While the students spend months in advance discussing overall safety and general best practice, the real crunch work for forecasting storms can only happen a day or two in advance of their trip.

“The forecasting process usually starts the day before. We look at computer weather models that simulate the atmosphere ahead of time,” says Guay.

In their day-before research, the club tries to identify instability in the atmosphere—winds changing direction with height (known as wind shear), which is a hallmark sign of tornadoes. Mix this with an initiating force such as a cold front, and you have a tornado or other severe storm. It’s a delicate balance, and what’s known as a “Goldilocks problem” in science, says Markowski.

“You need to have downdrafts because these are the airstreams that bring rotation to the ground, but if you have too much cold air, that disrupts the tornado process,” he says.

Given the fragility of the storm creation process, the students’ planning can change quickly, sometimes even in a few hours.

“Our goal is always to spend the night nearby where we think storms will develop, so we can wake up and chase. But sometimes you wake up six hours before you think a storm will hit, and you see that things have shifted. On one day, we camped in eastern Colorado, expecting to go to Kansas, but then we saw there was rain over Kansas that kept temperatures down. So we decided to head to southwest Oklahoma instead, where the weather was destabilizing,” says Guay.

Gaining experience with a different kind of forecasting

Because a storm may only be visible for a few minutes, it’s crucial that the students apply everything they know to be in the right spot at the right time.

Tracking storms brought the students across many states — in the 10 days they spent, the students had 4 good chase days: in northwest Ohio, in western Nebraska, in southwest Oklahoma and in southwest Texas. This tracking requires a different kind of forecasting, and for students interested in a career in operational forecasting, like Eherts, storm chasing is valuable experience.

“One of the courses we take is synoptic meteorology, which is the big picture of how weather changes—how low pressure systems move across the globe. But storm chasing is a lot more small scale. It’s really picking a single town where you think a storm will pop up,” says Eherts.

Eherts is interested in a career in operational air quality, and this storm chase opportunity—along with internships with the National Weather Service and Penn State’s Air Quality Forecast Lab—is helping her prepare.

Markowski, who has years of experience with chasing storms, says that just seeing storms in person is an educational experience.

“Meteorology is a major in which students study part of the earth’s system. As educators, we often talk about the importance of hands-on learning and hands-on discovery, and being out in the field chasing storms is part of that.”

It’s not just about storms, either. Sometimes just seeing a variety of weather develop across the country is an experience in itself.

“The coolest part about the trip for me,” says Eherts, “was being able to see the variety of weather. In Pennsylvania, it’s not often that we can chase storms, but in a 10 day span, we saw a supercellular tornado, softball-sized hail and other unique environments for weather.”