Giving back

ME grad grateful for MECOP internships

In 1992, Joe Brotherton left his parents family farm in Oakland, Oregon bound for OSU to study mechanical engineering and to play trombone in the marching band. He had never heard of the College of Engineering’s Multiple Engineering Cooperative Program (MECOP), which places engineering students in real industry jobs for six-month stints working alongside veteran engineers.

But almost a decade later, Brotherton now credits MECOP with changing the course of his life. The OSU mechanical engineering graduate (BS, ‘97; MS, ‘99) participated in two different internships, one at Beaverton-based Planar Systems his junior year, and another at Paramount Farms in Bakersfield, California his senior year. The latter internship led directly to a research proposal that Brotherton co-authored to Paramount Farms that ultimately funded his master’s degree studies.

Brotherton, a product design engineer at Consolidated Metco in Portland since 2000, says his MECOP internships were an ideal complement to the engineering coursework at OSU. “You learn things during the internship job that you don’t learn in the classroom,” he says. “And the networking and industry contacts you make are invaluable.” MECOP interns generally earn two-thirds of a starting engineering salary and perform hands-on engineering tasks. OSU also has a similar program for Civil Engineering students called the Civil Engineering Cooperative Program (CECOP). Students and industry partners interested in participating in the highly popular programs, must go through a competitive application process. In the five years since Brotherton was a MECOP intern, the mentor-focused programs have tripled in size.

Brotherton’s MECOP internships had such a positive impact on his life that he now volunteers as a member of the MECOP Advisory Board at OSU. “I feel I owe a debt to MECOP,” he says. “I don't know of any other internship program that provides this type of experience.”