For over a decade, Monument’s Intern and Co-Op programs have brought together some of the area’s most talented, aspiring environmental scientists and engineers to sharpen their skills and get hands-on experience at our plants and in our labs. While their time with us has resulted in some incredible success stories, our business continues to benefit from their talent and work ethic in so many wonderful ways too. And this year’s talent delivered big time!

A few of our interns and co-ops shared highlights of their Monument experience…

Enina Egiebor

Bayport Research and Development Intern

“I wanted to gain experience working in a plant setting, specifically with a company that produces specialty chemicals.I really liked the people I worked with in the R&D lab at Bayport (TX). They’re very easy to talk to and fun to be around, offering a valuable reminder that being at work can be entertaining and productive.Iwas able to expand my research and analysis skills, and translate my classroom skills to an actual lab setting and see how bench-scale results translate to plant-scale efficiency.”

Cade Miller

Brandenburg Production Engineer Co-op

“I grew up in Brandenburg (KY), and Monument has always been a well-known piece of the community. I received a community scholarship from Monument and served as the student representative on their community council in high school. During my co-op, the engineers I worked with always made a point to teach me about the process and allow me to develop and share my own ideas. I have amazing supervisors who give me challenging but manageable projects that make me feel useful and know that I’m contributing to the success of the plant.

"I’ve learned how to come up with practical solutions as an engineer, and this reminds me that what makes a good engineer is finding solutions within the capabilities of our equipment and under other constraints such as cost. I enjoyed administering a new labeling program for our cooling tower pumps, — with the full liberty to develop the logic for the program and work together with our controls engineer to implement it. I was also able to help update the labeling on all reactors and transfers between tanks and filters in PolyChem, which allowed me to learn and commit a large portion of the PolyChem unit to memory. I am very proud of this project because it improves the work environment for our operators and allows new employees to learn the unit quicker.”

Adrianna Fernandez
Houston Research and Development Intern

“I was drawn to Monument as a smaller company as I felt the experience would allow me to get to know my coworkers better and learn more skills. I enjoyed the lab the most because it was interesting to see the distillation columns in action, and it was a great feeling to operate my reactor autonomously. It was also cool to learn how all the moving parts worked together, and I enjoyed the responsibility and independence it afforded. At my university, I was caught up in passing my exams rather than enjoying the content, but Monument reignited the passion that made me want to pursue chemical engineering.”

Our other Houston interns included:

• Sebastian Zapata, Mechanical Engineer Intern
• Karina Corona, Lab Analyst Intern
• Caronlina Macias, Production Engineer Intern
• Seung Hong, Production Engineer Intern
• Prasanna Palanikumar, Project Engineer Intern

Thank you to our incredible interns for your creativity, insights, and impact at Monument!