Employer Spotlight: Mccormick Stevenson Corporation
McCormick Stevenson Corporation provides engineering services in support of the development and production of armament systems including direct and indirect munitions, missile and rocket systems, and naval systems. They are a small, non-traditional defense contractor that offers a unique level of responsiveness, which allows them to meet a wide range of challenges – their mission is focused on service to America’s warfighters and providing solutions as engineers.
Located in Clearwater, Florida, McCormick Stevenson Corporation’s main office is less than an hour away from USF’s Tampa campus. Many of their interns are USF Engineering students and much of their staff, including 2 of the 3 owners, are USF alumni. McCormick Stevenson has over 40 staff members and have 25+ years of experience delivering solutions to their clients. They offer a wide range of hands-on industry experiences for students “stepping foot” into their engineering careers for the first time.
Hear directly from McCormick Stevenson below:
Braeden Adams
Company: McCormick Stevenson
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Braeden Adams is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and is completing his internship with McCormick Stevenson. His tasks revolve around working on tooling design and CAD design with engineering support - some of his favorite roles on their team have been as a lead designer of government OTA proposals and as a tooling designer for manufacturing applications.
Adams emphasizes that his internship has allowed him to expand his existing electrical and automation engineering skills while pushing him out of his comfort zone. "The most enjoyable part of the internship is having the same responsibility as the full-time engineers around me. I have been trusted to hone my engineering skills to produce systems and components for various projects and communicate with customers." said Adams about his role.
Dan Gula
Company: McCormick Stevenson
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Dan Gula is a senior mechanical engineering major interning at McCormick Stevenson, where he is active in the tooling department, designing and creating fixtures for companies and contractors. Some of Gula's day-to-day tasks include filing purchase orders and quotes for job proposals and implementing new and innovative technologies that aid and assist our armed forces and government affiliates. His role has given him valuable exposure to geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) and firsthand interactions between engineers and their clients, leading to a better understanding of their decision-making process.
"I have been here for almost a year, and I feel like everyone in the office is willing to help and answer questions. They all make you feel like you are a part of the team from day one," said Gula about the company culture at McCormick Stevenson - he emphasizes that his internship experience has developed his knowledge around manufacturing, tolerancing and design software, which will help him stand out as an engineer moving forward.
Parush Gera
Major: Computer Science
Company: Palo Alto Networks
Parush Gera is a fifth-year computer science PhD student specializing in natural language processing (NLP). Currently, he is interning at Palo Alto Networks as an Artificial intelligence/Machine Learning Software Engineering Intern. Gera's tasks and responsibilities are centered around developing generative AI models to facilitate the automation of complex code generation. "Through this internship, I aim to acquire invaluable experience, particularly in crafting and optimizing intricate, deep learning models and deploying them in a production environment," said Gera.
This semester is Gera's second internship with Palo Alto Networks - his first was in 2022, where the company approved a technique developed by Gera for patent filing. He emphasizes that his internship directly compliments and advances his research "my research revolves around crafting natural language models capable of discerning an author's stance from written text. " said Gera. His work was published at the ACL Association for Computational Linguistics workshop, and he published an article that delves into predicting lung injuries caused by vaping in the U.S. utilizing analysis of Twitter and CDC data.
Miguel Dallosbel Centenaro
Major: Industrial Engineering
Company: Tesla
Miguel Dallosbel Centenaro is a junior majoring in industrial engineering and is a Field Recruiting Intern at Tesla. Some of his tasks include analyzing and collecting data throughout the entire recruitment process – all the way up until job placement. His objective within the recruiting team is to optimize and simplify systems, all while improving his knowledge of data literacy and analysis.
Centenaro emphasized the value of working with a large team and how that has positively impacted his professional development: "I hope to keep developing teamwork and leadership skills that will be helpful for the future of my career, in addition to taking advantage of this time in a corporate environment to visualize how and where I want to focus after graduating." - Centenaro expresses interest in working in the automotive industry post-graduation.
Additionally, his time at Tesla has allowed him to apply his knowledge from classes like Foundations of Optimization and Engineering Programming in real-life projects that are making an impact on the company. "I believe that the best learning system is to apply theory in real-life experiences, and it is great to know that the skills I learn throughout my major in Industrial Engineering," said Centenaro. He also noted his involvement in student organizations like the Brazillian Student Association, which he serves as president of, has helped him develop skills that have been critical in his success as an intern and beyond.
Het Patel
Company: Pursuit Aerospace
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Het Patel is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and is completing his summer internship at Pursuit Aerospace, where he serves as a Manufacturing Engineer Intern. Some of his daily tasks revolve around CNC programming for milling, EDM, laser cutting and lathes - he often finds himself designing, modifying and optimizing tool room parts that support the production using Siemens NX.
Patel's desired goals from the internship range from gaining practical insight into manufacturing processes to improving his problem-solving abilities and communication skills - he has enjoyed many of the hands-on aspects of his role, notably overseeing the development of generated programs into actual products.
"I enjoyed my journey with my recent project creating a Tool Library for a new machine on the production floor that allowed me to analyze and observe the converting of digital data design to a physical operation. From material selection, fabrication, quality control, and final assembly, ensuring it meets design specifications for real-world use," said Patel about his role at Pursuit.
Patel highlights how working in the aerospace manufacturing industry requires a great deal of attention to detail, mainly because they are required to work under the guidelines of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). " One of the key moments of realizations was to feel the parts produced in front of me were the same I may be flying on tomorrow," said Patel about the impact of his work.