Over a dozen seniors from South Chicago’s Baker College Prep were tasked last week with making a better forehead thermometer (from opening its package to utilization), improving patient gowns and redesigning a rolling walker.
As part of an internship opportunity between Baker and Medline Industries Inc. (manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies), students like Abdoullaye Doucoure, 17, of South Chicago, who is considering a major in biochemistry, and Jacqui Logan, 18, of South Shore, who wants to be a family lawyer, got the chance to work at Medline’s Northfield campus on real life problems with health care products that consumers use every day.
“We gave each group of students a distinct product and said become the user and identify the problems as you’re using it,” said Michael Turturro, Medline’s director of product development. “We gave them all kinds of things to make them have poor vision or maybe not have good dexterity as they try these devices. So, if you’re an elderly patient, maybe it’s not as easy as someone in high school to figure out how to use it. Empathize with the end user, figure out problems. The devices work, but they’re not perfect for a usability standpoint. So they defined what they wanted to solve, then they ideated solutions and then they prototyped and tested those.”
The program came about with the assistance of Nancy Mills, a board member of Baker and a part of the Mills family, which owns Medline, said Baker’s principal Mary Arrigo. Knowing how many college students compete for and benefit from internships, Arrigo said she’s excited to see what students glean from the experience and how the program grows.
Medline Industries has been in the news in the last 16 months because of ethylene oxide it has been emitting when sterilizing medical supplies, but according to a Medline spokesperson, the internship program is not a response to that intended to improve the company’s image. The company stopped sterilization operations in December and more recently has been testing emissions controls with monitoring by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
“No. It wasn’t created in response to that,” said Francesca Olivier, Medline’s senior director of social responsibility and innovation. “We’ve actually been doing initiatives around STEM and other local engagements with schools in the area for over five years now, and when we were introduced to the Baker school, we wanted to see what we could do with them to be a little bit more robust, to be more of like a mini-internship for them.”
The work that Medline has been doing around STEM with various local schools began in 2014, and Baker was added to the program in early 2018.
“It gives them a great learning experience and a great window into what their post-college world could look like, and what options are out there,” Arrigo said. “Some of the things that we’re hoping to do through this internship: giving our kids the opportunity to have hands-on experience in a professional environment like Medline with real projects, trying to solve real problems that push them to really think critically about those problems. We wanted to design an experience that gives them the opportunity to meet people that they wouldn’t normally see in their normal school setting.”
Thursday was the second day of the two-day winter internship — a continuation of the summer weeklong internship, and students Logan and Travis Gipson, 17, of South Chicago were hard at work cleaning up what they consider a more readily usable 3D printed thermometer. This one will have packaging that is easier to open, as well as just one button so it will be less confusing to operate when checking temperature on the forehead or by the ear. The original device also checked temperatures on surfaces like baby bottles, but the user had to hold down two buttons simultaneously until the thermometer screen said “food.” According to Gipson and his team, that was too confusing. So, the group’s prototype has a sliding button that goes from forehead to surface — much easier than holding two buttons, they said. Real world problems with real world implications.
“Something can always be better fabricated,” said Tionna Merritt, 18, of South Chicago. “There’s nothing just that good; there’s always something to improve on.”
“I like creating things, so I like the challenge,” Logan said.
While the second class of Baker students (the first class of Baker students participated in internships during the 2018-19 school year) tackled these STEM challenges, they also got career coaching and mentoring from Medline employees volunteering their time, said Karen Frey, senior philanthropy manager at Medline, who runs the program.
“We can be as dynamic as we want to be,” Frey said. “Medline is a microcosm of so many job opportunities out there in the world … of what you could potentially do. You could do sales, HR, finance, design, research and development — that’s all here. So, when the students say: I don’t want to be in the medical field. I’m really interested in being an accountant. You know what? We have a robust accounting team here, and we can connect you. One of the big goals at Baker is college persistence, and this is a wonderful opportunity to say, ‘Hey, after you have achieved those college persistence goals, this is what one type of work could look like on the other side.'”
At the end of the internship, the students pitch their improvement ideas to Medline’s product division team, and if they really like their ideas, the students’ names could end up on a Medline patent, Turturro said.
“What they’re doing, we may do as a team,” Turturro said. “And if they come up with a novel idea, they’re the inventor. Medline would have the patent, but the inventor would be listed with the student’s name.”
“The students come to all of these projects with such a different point of view, and the influences in their lives resonate through the projects that they’re presenting,” Frey said. “It’s so cool. Our research and development team tells them, you may see this on the market in a few years. When they’re doing a project and one of the groups come up with an idea, we all kind of look at each other like: Why didn’t we think of that?”
