Internships send county STEM students near and far

South River High School STEM student Jared Bishop spent his summer working on race car engines in North Carolina.
Classmate Simone Oliver has been busy conducting cancer research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda.
Fellow Seahawk Eric Johnson has just returned from a summer in Rhode Island, where he worked with a 3-D printing company.
The three were among 200 students in the county public schools' STEM program - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - completing internships around the country this summer.
The internships allowed students to work alongside professionals in STEM-related fields, giving them valuable hands-on experience, said Kristina Gillmeister, the school system's STEM coordinator.
"We teach them in the classroom how to become 'STEM-ists,' and this is the chance to actually do it," Gillmeister said. "It's the ultimate chance to apply what they're learning in the classroom to real-world situations."
The STEM program's students are required to complete 135 hours of internship time before graduation to get a credit and a STEM endorsement.
In North Carolina, Bishop interned with Earnhardt Childress Racing. His responsibilities included building parts, building and testing engines, and designing springs and fuel injection systems. The 17-year-old Broadneck Peninsula resident would lend a helping hand wherever needed.
"It was pretty spectacular," Bishop said. "I got a much wider view of the field than I thought I would. I thought it would be more of the design aspect, but (the internship) gave me a taste of everything."
While he didn't go to any races or meet any drivers, he did become more of a racing fan. He was already was passionate about cars.
Bishop found the internship through the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, which he hopes to attend.
"With how the program is at UNC-Charlotte, hopefully I can get a pretty decent and rewarding job after I get my degree," he said.
Oliver has finished up her internship at NIH. The 17-year-old Crofton resident spent much of her time working alongside cancer researchers, doing everything from cell culturing and tissue staining to removing organs from mice.
Oliver said the internship will help her as she prepares for her senior year of high school and beyond. She hopes to study biomedical engineering and eventually become a neurologist.
"The things I get to do with them are things people don't experience outside of medical school," she said.
Fellow South River student Eric Johnson got home from Rhode Island last week after completing an internship at a 3-D printing company, KMRM LLC. Three-dimensional printing can be used to create and repair objects.
"If you can imagine anything you need, you can make it on a 3-D printer," Johnson said.
"Say you rip a plastic cup - you can remake a plastic cup that's watertight and drink out of it. People have made fence posts. You can make them hollow, you can make them thick, you can make them thin. There are a lot of practical uses for a 3-D printer."
Johnson, who hopes to study robotic engineering in college, found the internship through his grandmother, who lives in Rhode Island.
About 60 percent of STEM students find internships through the school system, which works with local and national companies to provide opportunities.
Forty percent of students find internships on their own, though the companies must be approved and background checks must be completed on all employees.
Closer to home, South River rising senior Nicholas Simon interned at radio station WRNR in Annapolis. He learned about operations, production, promotions, programming and sales.
Simon followed 2013 South River graduate Nichole Rohrer, who interned at the radio station last summer and was subsequently hired. She is heading to college this fall.
"It worked out as good as can be," said Michael Hughes, a manager at WRNR. "Being involved in the (internship) program and having it work out so well, we jumped at a chance to host another intern."