Prairie State Generating Company is excited to welcome Chris Couch as a mechanical engineering intern for the summer of 2018.
Couch is from Shiloh, Illinois, and is entering his senior year at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (SIU-E) as a mechanical engineering major. There, he is president of the SIU-E chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a recruiter for the Joint Engineering Student Council, and an assistant to Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Mechanical Engineering appealed to him because he is interested in understanding how machines work, and he likes to improve mechanical systems.
This is Couch’s fourth internship. He has been an engineering intern at Utility Design Services, a co-op group manager at Anheuser-Busch, and a co-op project engineer at Barry-Wehmiller Design Group. “I have enjoyed seeing design and process improvements, and I am excited to work at PSGC to be involved more directly with engineering concepts.”
This summer, Couch will be working with 3D modeling and design tools, creating pipe distribution designs, and calculating heat transfer and stress analysis. “I am excited to work on technical projects that require the use of engineering principles, and it will be great to see these projects being completed over the course of the summer.”
Couch will return to SIU-E in the fall to complete his degree. In the future, he hopes to pursue a career in mechanical engineering, possibly in the power generation industry. He would like to work with design and project engineering, advancing to management in the future.