by Suzanne Howard

It Opened My Eyes Joe Miller, a senior in the agricultural systems management (ASM) program at Purdue University, had the opportunity to participate in the largest outdoor farm show in the United States for his first college internship. He was assistant show manager for the Farm Progress Show held near Lafayette, Ind.
     “I wanted to work for the show — I grew up with the Farm Progress Shows,” says Miller.
     Miller had to make sure the 2,400-acre show grounds were ready, prepped, and maintained. He was responsible for installing utilities: electric, phone, underground water, satellite, and internet. He built streets, maintained agricultural test plots, and took care of any other anemities customers needed.
     Miller spent the summer preparing for the threeday show held in late September, and another two months returning the grounds back to their original condition.
     “It was a lot more responsibility than I originally thought,” says Miller. “Responsibility and time management were the most important things I learned in this internship.

Participating in an internship for the Farm Progress Show taught Joe Miller responsibility and time management skills. He was assistant show manager for the show when it was held near Lafayette, Indiana.

     Those skills prepared him for his second internship with Case New Holland (CNH) where he was a sales and service intern at their Midwest Commercial Business Unit in Indianapolis, Ind. The 12-week program combines six weeks of service and six weeks of sales experience.
     During the service training, Miller was responsible for keeping machines running, handling and correcting service problems, and working with customer and dealer issues as they came up.
     “I walked in not knowing how things worked on a corporate level. They told me to pick up the phone, write down what people said, solve what I could, and what I couldn’t solve, they’d work on it with me,” says Miller. “It was kind of rough. It was a lot of information but really educational.”
     Miller had the opportunity to travel to Nebraska to view combines recently manufactured by CNH before they were released to the public. While there, he dealt with service issues, training, and later attended a fall corporate business meeting.
     The second six weeks of his CNH internship was devoted to sales. Miller says he learned the products and who the people were in the company, traveled to dealerships to find out what they wanted and needed, and what the company could provide them. He also worked with the parts department doing phone sales and talking with parts management.
     At the end of the internship, Miller worked with dealer presentations on four-wheel drives, dealt with customer issues, and took orders for large equipment.
     “The last couple of weeks was the most exciting,” says Miller. “I really got to go out and push the iron. CNH provided a great opportunity for growth and learning and gave me a lot of responsibility. The training was tremendous — it opened my eyes.”
     Miller hopes to work for a large agricultural equipment company in testing and/or service or in the sales and marketing area when he graduates.
     He feels fortunate that he experienced the Farm Progress Show as his first internship because it provided him a broad overview of agricultural systems management. He also credits that experience in helping to make the more specialized internship at CNH such a success.

Opening Doors for Others
     Trevor Phipps, a senior at Texas A&M University, opened doors for agricultural systems management (ASM) students to do internships at Vulcan Materials Co. The company produces construction aggregates – crushed stone, sand, and gravel.
     Phipps, an ASAE member, had done previous internships for companies that made aggregate production equipment and wanted to work for a materials company such as Vulcan. The company didn’t recruit students for internships with a major in ASM because they weren’t familiar with the program. So Phipps bypassed the internship program at Vulcan and applied for a summer job. He says this way actually worked out better than an internship because he got to work in the quarries and run portions of the plant.
     He spent the summer working in a Texas quarry for Vulcan, where he performed maintenance and operated plant equipment, as well as laid out explosive charges to blow out sections of the quarry for mining. Phipps says the job involved a lot of manual labor and maintenance on machinery that broke down every day.
     “I gained lots of experience in how machines run and how the quarry operation works,” says Phipps.
     His interest in ASM stemmed from his participation in the Future Farmers of America. He knew he wanted to go into an industry where he could work with his hands and in management. The ASM program was the direct route to accomplish his goal.
     “An agricultural systems program is undervalued,” says Phipps.“It is a great program and provides a rounded perspective on management.”
     Phipps says that having a “real world experience” taught him so much more than what he was taught in a classroom. He learned management skills and how to deal with employees.
     “I loved every minute. It was very intense,” says Phipps. “I was working 85 hours a week.”
     Phipps says working for Vulcan Materials Co. was a great experience. So much so, that upon graduation, he has accepted a position with the company in their management training program for production management of a quarry. In two years, he hopes to be managing his own quarry.
     His summer job provided a foot in the door for his own career goals but also opened doors for other ASM students. Vulcan now actively recruits ASM program majors into their internship program, thanks in part to Phipps’s experience.

See the Wide-Open Country
     Jacob Misch and Matt Coulter, roommates and sophomores at Purdue University, spent their summer following the wheat and barley harvest from Texas to Idaho as part of a custom harvest crew.
     The agricultural systems management majors had heard about custom harvesting and wanted to experience it for themselves. After calling advertisers in farm magazines, searching the Internet, and following up on other leads, they eventually found a harvester that sounded like a good employer – one where they felt they would fit. They were looking for a smaller, custom harvest operation that would allow them to get back to school in time for the fall semester.

top: Jacob Misch uses a yield monitor inside the combine cab. left: Matt Coulter checks the quality in the windrows left behind the combine.

     Misch and Coulter were part of a three-man crew, the owner being the third person. Their days would begin with getting needed machine parts, fueling and greasing the machines, and doing maintenance before cutting began. The crew worked with two combines and two semi-trucks, trucking the grain to an elevator or the grower’s grain bins. They usually worked 14-hour days, cutting an average of 160-200 acres a day.
     The harvesting work began in northern Texas, proceeded up through Nebraska, where the crew switched from harvesting wheat to malt barley, and then continued on to Wyoming and Idaho.
     Misch says the biggest challenge with custom harvesting was the limited number of people doing the work, limited time, and how to move the equipment from spot to spot and still keep on schedule.
     “Our boss had gone through the same agricultural systems management program and knew what we were after for a degree. He let us in on management decisions and let us decide things,” says Misch.
     Misch enjoyed the management side of this internship and says he is considering doing custom harvesting professionally when he graduates.
     “It also provided an opportunity to find out what it was like to be on our own and a chance to see the country,” adds Misch. “I would highly recommend the experience to others.”