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PLAINS TWP. — Eileen Cipriani readily admitted she was not tech savvy just before she put on the virtual reality goggles. “Last time I did this, I got stuck in a corner,” she chuckled.
Borton-Lawson intern Vincent Pavill offered reassuring words as he put controllers in each hand and the bulky goggles on her head to allow her to walk around a virtual room, move boxes and test fire detection equipment for blind spots. The state Department of Labor and Industry deputy secretary for workforce development promptly fulfilled her prophecy, and others in the room anxiously guided her from bumping into a corner of furniture and people.
Cipriani was willing to display her VR inadequacies in an effort to highlight a higher cause: programs that give college students like Pavill real work experience interning at leading companies with cutting-edge tools. In particular, she touted Gov. Tom Wolf’s State/Local Internship Program (SLIP), that will spend $4.4 million this year giving internships to students at Borton Lawson and 617 other participating businesses state-wide.
“This program started four years ago,” Cipriani said, “But last year the governor took the rules away,” broadening opportunities from 735 interns to 1,085.
Borton Lawson CEO Frank Joanlanne said internships have been avidly embraced by his firm as the shortage of tech-savvy workers increased in recent years. He also noted the firm has been making efforts to help instill an interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects in schools down to the early grades.
“It’s no longer an ancillary part of our business; it’s an integral part to how we are going to grow.”
Cipriani also mentioned a related program Wolf introduced that connects teachers with companies, giving them a chance to work for up to a week during the summer to see what skills employers are really looking for, and what tools they use. “Many high school teachers go to high school and college and back into the high school classroom,” She said. Along with giving the teachers stories that can help students better connect the lessons they are learning with the jobs they may pursue, the program has a bonus: During lessons the teachers mention the companies where they worked, providing some free PR.
But Pavill offered a distinctive spin on the value of an internship. He is a Penn State student from Shickshinny studying surveying — a skill he admitted was not high on the list of Borton Lawson’s needs. Yet he also studies computer game development. So when he learned about their virtual reality efforts, he started to help develop the one Cipriani sampled.
“The two skills paired better than most people expected,” he said. “We do 3-D models and create virtual survey labs, so students can still learn if it’s raining out.”
Besides, surveying is as high tech as those VR goggles. He showed off a Leica tool on a tripod that spins rapidly, shooting out laser beams and reading when they bounce back, piling up data on object distance, elevation and other factoids, putting it all into a “point cloud” that allows all types of analysis.
He told his story in an office full of flat screens sitting on desks that could rise and drop for workers who want to sit or stand, with one shelf sporting an old-school surveying tool: a vintage transit, that with a theodolite has been used for ages to measure horizontal and vertical angles — much like that Leica laser gizmo, only less so.
