Selective engineering internship allows junior Landon Butler to develop his career skills

As his alarm blares at 7:30 a.m. on a July morning, junior Landon Butler gets out of bed before most other high schoolers to head to his full time job at Kiewit Engineering and Design in Lenexa, Kansas. Over the summer, Butler was granted an internship at Kiewit to work with engineers of all different disciplines and explore his own projects related to the company.

While he did not start the job until this summer, the interview process began back in October 2015 so the company could find 10 interns out of the 435 applicants. The company was looking for students performing well above their age in not only their science and math, but in their professionalism and ability to lead others.

Butler believes his experiences in and out of school helped him fit the mold they were looking for. As well as polished skills, the company required a general background in academic areas in order to be able to work on designing power plants on a 2-D level.

“I’m an Eagle Scout, and my classes have always been with older people, so I’ve developed a sense of communication and leadership through that,” Butler said. “I’ve always been really advanced [in] math and I didn’t do that many calculations this summer but I understand the calculations. I took physics last year and that really prepared me for how a power plant functions and fluid forces like that.”

Gifted teacher Carmen Shelly knew Butler was fit for the job as soon as she learned about the program.

“I think he had already been asking for some internships, even as a freshman, and I knew then after his sophomore year this would be open to him,” Shelly said. “There were several [of my students] who applied, but Landon got his in very, very early. He did a very good job with that.”

After Butler started working, he realized the most important benefit of the job was not just the experience for his resume, but being able to confirm his career goals.

“The best part was there were so many disciplinary engineers there. There’s designers and engineers from an electrical standpoint, structural, mechanical and chemical, and on a day-to-day basis I got to interact with these people and find out what fits my skills,” Butler said. “It helped me narrow down what I want to do as an engineer when I actually go into the career field.”

While Shelly agrees Butler gained an important experiential grasp of the field, she knew before the internship his interest in the field was different than other students in her classes.

“It seems like he has been focused on [engineering] for quite a while and that interest has stayed,” Shelly said. “Voyagers students will express interests in a lot of different things and that is perfectly normal for a gifted student, but Landon has stayed with that same idea for a long time so you know it really fits him.”

Aside from his passion for the career, Shelly thinks Butler’s skills help to propel him into the world of engineering.

“Landon enjoys the logic but he also enjoys the new ideas and if you put those together in a practical way: that’s engineering,” Shelly said.

Butler is now setting out to prove he can be more than the “nerdy, math and science” guy and make a difference in the work he does.

“I want to be known as well-rounded [person] who can accomplish stuff,” Butler said. “This engineering internship helped define that I am more than just a student and I can do other things in this world.”