Many consider internships to be one of the most crucial parts of higher education. Ryan Walter, a senior with a Mechanical Engineering major, secured a summer internship at Koch-Glitsch, a machinery manufacturer subsidiary of Koch Industries, as a Quality Engineering Intern.

With this internship, Walter’s job is to ensure the machines and production methods used in Koch-Glitsch factories are up to date.

“All of engineering comes with problem-solving,” Walter said. “Quality is heavily problem solving – just in a bit of a different environment than traditional mechanical engineering.” 

Walter, a Koch Scholar at Wichita State, originally applied for the internship as a freshman. 

“I’ve known about Koch for years,” Walter said. “About six months after I got the scholarship, I applied for a position with them and didn’t hear back for two years because I was a freshman and sophomore. Then, a little while back they reached out and asked if I wanted to attend an event which gave you early access to internships.”

Walter also said that he greatly respects Koch Industries and the company as a whole. 

While working as an intern, Walter feels that he gained real-world experiences within his field of study, especially when it came to working with a bigger group of professional engineering teams. 

“My previous internship work has been with engineering teams, but Koch had a much larger team than I had worked with before,” Walter said. “I was working in a lot more departments than I had before under quality, so you get a chance to work with a large-scale team and that was great.”  

Ryan’s twin brother, Kyle Walter, a former intern with the Smart Factory, said his brother is incredibly smart, hard-working and driven. 

“He’s always trying new things or working on multiple hobbies. He also has a strong character and moral compass,” Kyle said. “I’ve had the opportunity to work with him for the last couple of years, and he applies the same principles to his work as well as his social life. I’m thankful to be able to call him a great friend, as well as a brother.” 

Despite his positive experience, Ryan said he wished he would’ve gotten a chance to work with people. 

“I am more interested in the human side of engineering,” Ryan said. “I recommend anybody to apply for an internship with (Koch), but personally, I would’ve liked to have a larger chance to meet people, to work with people, to work in the side of it which was more human-focused. ”