REA Summer Engineering Experience

In keeping with the REA mission that supports, honors, and connects Rice engineers before and after graduation, we launched the REA Summer Engineering Experience (SEE) to help a wide range of students obtain their first engineering experience in a professional work environment.  We believe that students who have been accepted to Rice and want to be engineers, can be engineers.  However, many students often do not get an opportunity to experience real world engineering and might become disillusioned with engineering.  As a result, we target early tenure students who are completing their freshmen or sophomore year, but we also prioritize working with juniors who have not yet had an engineering experience.  

We work extensively with the Rice Emerging Scholars Program (RESP) to identify promising candidates and to support applicants through resume reviews, mock interviews, and informational panels.  RESP’s mission is to ensure that students of high potential who attended under-resourced high schools, particularly low-income and first-generation students, persist, thrive, and graduate at the same rate as their peers, and that these students achieve their academic and professional aspirations as scientists and engineers.   We also work with other Rice engineering organizations like the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).  Our opportunities and panels are open to all interested students.

The REA SEE was launched in the fall of 2020 and resulted in the placement of two interns at Blade Energy Partners in the summer of 2021.  Our program expanded the following year to place seven interns at four host companies:  Blade Energy Partners, Unified Industries, Clutch Sports Data, and Key Capture Energy.  We look forward to placing even more interns for the summer of 2023.

If you are a prospective host company, interested student, or engineering alumni please email rea-see@googlegroups.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

For Prospective Host Companies:

This is a great way to connect to the pipeline of Rice engineering talent.  The REA board seeks to work with a wide range of potential employers.  We can provide candidate screening to identify prospective students.   For some host companies, we identify a slate of potential candidates for a final round or we can complete the entire selection process and submit those selections to your HR department. 

For Interested Students:

The REA is highly interested in helping students achieve professional success.  Our REA Summer Engineering Opportunities will be posted to 12twenty.  Due to different host company schedules, there will be multiple postings.   We encourage students to visit the Center for Career Development to improve their resumes and practice interviews.   Our REA mentors are available to help add industry context to resumes and practice interviews.

For Engineering Alumni:

We are always seeking additional host companies.  This is a great way to contribute to the success of Rice engineering students.  We also are seeking mentors to provide our students additional guidance on the professional work environment.  For each REA SEE participant, we seek to pair them with a non-host company employee to be available to provide guidance.  In past years, mentors have worked with students on communication skills for presentations, developing resume descriptions of the internship, and answering professional etiquette questions.  

Please consider making a donation to support this program.  Donations are used to help interns with summer living expenses as well as provide stipends to students who might be placed a smaller start-up companies.