UT Permian Basin Alum, Nolan Hines just finished a successful internship with Pioneer Natural Resources in Irving, Texas. He said thanks to the UTPB engineering career fair, hosted every fall by UTPB’s Career Services team, he landed a great opportunity.
“My internship consists of a summer long project, so a day at the internship is usually centered around working on that project,” Hines explained. “My role is really to be a sponge and soak up as much knowledge of the business as I can while applying my engineering skill set to my summer project and ideally provide a valuable deliverable by the end of the summer.”
Hines graduated with his Master of Mechanical Engineering in 2021 and said this degree helped him tremendously in starting his career.
“The master’s degree really gave me a more robust technical background that has helped me cultivate good independent learning habits. It’s impossible to learn everything about the industry at school, but the problem-solving skills learned in the master’s program have allowed me to both quickly understand engineering related industry concepts as well as learn new non-engineering related skills on the fly.”
Hines said he would encourage industry professionals to go back and get their master’s degree from UTPB.
“The master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering is a great way to bolster your engineering knowledge. The main advice I can give is to reach out to some of the faculty if you are interested in the program, work out a plan that will work with your schedule, and give it a shot. There is some exciting research happening at the University, so speak with professors about helping contribute to the research.”
To learn more about the graduate degrees and certificates in engineering at UTPB, visit www.utpb.edu/academics/graduate-studies/graduate-programs. To schedule a tour with the College of Engineering, visit our tour page.
