The Prairie State Generating Company is excited to welcome Kathryn Torre as an electrical engineering intern for the summer of 2017.
Torre, who is a senior studying electrical engineering at the University of West Florida, is a Highland, Illinois native. She said she is interested in power generation and is working towards earning a power certificate at West Florida. Torre’s dad alerted her about Prairie State’s internship program and she jumped at the opportunity to apply.
Torre’s interest in power generation and her classwork at West Florida made her the right fit for the electrical engineering opening at Prairie State.
“I am in a class right now that talks about electrostatic precipitators, which is what we use here,” Torre said. “The class is called future power systems. It talks about all of the different kind of power plants. When I was studying, I was happy to see how much material was already familiar to me thanks to our training here at PSGC. All of the systems here are applicable to what I’m studying in school.”
On top of Torre’s studies in college, she spent five years playing college volleyball for the West Florida Argonauts and for the State College of Florida as a middle blocker. Torre saw lots of success as a collegiate athlete; she was a 2015 American Volleyball Coaches Association All-American Honorable Mention and was named to the All-South Region First Team in the same year.
Torre said her experience as a collegiate athlete helps her assimilate to the professional world because of the team atmosphere she played in in college.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of personalities. I helped navigate through internal drama. I’ve had leadership roles on all of the teams I’ve played on,” she said. “All of that has definitely prepared me to work in an environment with other people with different opinions, ideas and ways of doing things.”
Torre is still trying to find her fit in the professional world, she’s not sure what career she will end up in post-graduation, but she knows that Prairie State will help her find where she is meant to be.
“I’m not sure if the power generation industry is for me, but stay tuned because we will find out at the end of the summer if this is where I want to be,” Torre said. “So far I really like it. I think the power plant is super cool and going down into the coal mine was really cool. I’m into it. I like it.”