2006 Academic Showcase: Practicum Report

Amy Hu spent twenty five hours interning at the Ellicott City Eye Center, a nearby optometry office to her house. She worked with the optometrist doctor, dealing with patients by helping with eye exams, pick out a pair of glasses, and taught individuals how to put in contact lenses.

Some of the main benefits of this project Amy Hu experienced were those of personal growth. She really enjoyed working and interacting with people; and learning the stories, anecdotes, and experiences of patients.

However, no experience is without pitfalls, and some of the few that Amy encountered were that she felt like a lot of the work was repetitive because there was only one doctor and the same type of thing occurred at almost every visit.

Sharada Baddela

Sharada Baddela spent a summer visiting her home village of Aditya in India and shadowing several doctors in the local hospital. The three doctors she interned with were a radiologist, a gynecologist, and a lab director. She learned about the procedures in the hospital and how to work certain equipment such as x-rays.

The personal growth that Sharada Baddela felt she acquired during her time spent in the Indian hospital was that of satisfaction in finding her career. She became incredibly interested in becoming a doctor and reaffirmed her desire as well.

The obstacles that Sharada had to deal with while interning at the hospital was the overall misconception of the American pre-medical school education. In India there is no equivalent to this University’s pre-med program, the doctor candidates simply graduate from high school and begin a four year medical program. She encountered problems with the hospital staff because they expected her to have prior medical-school level knowledge and she felt challenged by such an assumption.

Andreia Rauta

Andreia Rauta’s interned at the Best Manufacturing Practice (BMP) for one and a half years. The BMP is subcontracted by the US office of Naval Research. Andreia worked testing beta versions of proprietary software programs like TRIMS, SpecRite, and KnowHow. She created online help files to accompany programs and also managed the SpecRite program. One of the programs finds bugs in software and reports them and suggests possible solutions.

Andreia recalls the benefits of working on this project including an insight on the business world, developing group team work skills, and enhancing her leadership skills. She also gained knowledge of program coding and developed a skill for graphic art.

She describes the main obstacle that was difficult to overcome was not knowing the program language she was working with. She admits this was a pitfall and hindered her from fully diving into her work headfirst.