Baxter’s U.S. Internship Program provides interns with 12 weeks of supervised and practical work experience that is directly related to their academic studies and career goals. The program averages more than 100 students each year in areas such as, finance/accounting, engineering, information technology, manufacturing, packaging, research and development, marketing and regulatory affairs. After completing the Internship Program, many interns are hired as full-time employees.

At Baxter, interns typically will:

·          Assume full responsibility and contribute in a professional capacity in their internship area;

·          Gain experience through Baxter’s businesses and functions;

·          Learn from, work with and network with Baxter professionals from a variety of areas across the organization;

·          Receive performance assessments and feedback at the end of their assignment. Assessments and feedback are based on core intern responsibilities and the Baxter Leadership Expectations.

March is Women's History Month!

This year’s national theme is Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  This theme is meant to honor generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields.

As part of our Women’s History Month celebrations, the Women's Center and CWIT are partnering to showcase six talented women in engineering and IT fields at UMBC. The future of women’s history is being created as we speak and there is importance in sharing our lived stories now. We invite you to join us throughout the month of March to learn more about these women, their experiences, and their dreams.

Emily Scheerer, CWIT Scholar
Junior Computer Science major & STEM Editor of Retriever Weekly

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major.
My interest in STEM was sparked in my sophomore year of high school. I took Computer Science 1 at my high school to fulfill my technology education requirement. My father encouraged me to take Computer Science over some of the "easier" options. I discovered that Computer Science was fun and came naturally to me. I had an amazing teacher who noticed my interest and convinced me to be in her Computer Science AP course the following year. My teacher continued to encourage me, pointing me towards various extracurricular opportunities, including MESA (Math, Engineering and Science Achievement) and NTHS (National Tech. Honor Society). I experimented with various kinds of engineering, but ultimately chose to stay with software design and Computer Science.

Tell us about an internship, research experience or project that you are proud of.
While I’m proud to have been a part of a lot of projects and programs, the one that shines out most is my internship at Booz Allen Hamilton the summer between my freshman and sophomore year.  I worked on a team of 12 interns, four of whom were women. The high concentration of women was significant in making it one of the best intern experiences I've had.  As a team we worked in conjunction with three full-time employees to build an automated testing capability for an existing project from scratch. In ten weeks, we built a library of automated tests that could be applied and used in many different ways, and created documentation for that library so that it could be easily referenced. After we left, our manager contacted us to let us know that the work we did was ultimately crucial to the final completion of the project.

Who are your role models in the engineering or IT field?
First, Dianne O'Grady-Cuniff, the teacher who inspired and encouraged me in high school, who spent many hours after her work day working with students to encourage our interests, and is super committed to education. I hope I can one day encourage and inspire young women the same way she does.

Second, Marie desJardins. I admire her confidence and the projects she works on. Whenever I have told Dr. desJardins I have doubt in my abilities, she tells me a personal anecdote about how she feels a similar way but still manages to achieve the successes she's achieved. Ultimately, I admire her self-confidence and strive to replicate it.

Third, Lady Ada Lovelace. Lady Lovelace is one of the iconic figures in computer science history. Although at the time her work was largely unnoticed, she predicted most of the common programming constructs that we use today. Lady Lovelace, like myself, enjoyed writing in addition to computing, and managed to raise a family while collaborating on one of the world's first computer. Her iconic success is my reminder that one woman can go a long way in changing stereotypes related to women in the STEM fields.

Explain your experience as a woman in a STEM major, including the challenges as well as the rewards.
As a woman in STEM, I'm always aware of the fact that I'm female in a class of mostly guys. I tend to count the number of women in every class I've been in at UMBC and am always aware that the ratio between men and women in my classes will be skewed. Another challenge of being a female in the STEM fields is that everyone, and even sometimes yourself, assumes your success can be attributed to the fact that you're a woman, and not because of your skills. The desire to prove you actually belong and have achieved your own success will never go away.

The rewards of being a woman in STEM include an instant community with other women in STEM.
Every woman in the field knows the battles you will face and they will help you to succeed. Additionally, being a woman in STEM means that you are defying a stereotype and hopefully becoming a role model for the future.

The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities.

Learn more about our community athttp://www.cwit.umbc.edu/

Over the past few months I’ve had the privilege of spending some quality time with some of the web’s most talented designers. Whether over Skype, on the Happy Monday podcast, or on the upcoming Treehouse Chat show, I’ve been listening hard to the different angles and strategies revolving around Responsive Design. I’d like to share some of those insights with you now.

We’re All Figuring This Thing Out

I’m fortunate enough to co-host a podcast with the lovely and talented, Sarah Parmenter. Last week she was telling me about her experience at the annual Responsive Day Out conference that she had attended that day with the likes of Elliot Jay Stocks, Laura Kalbag, Mark Boulton, Jeremy Keith and more. Essentially, these were some of the most well-known designers on the web, and there was one underlying theme that permeated the entire conference: We’re all figuring this thing out.

I say that, to say this: Remember to keep your head up and in the game when it comes to Responsive Design because it can get complicated very quickly. There is no stopping this direction of the web and there is no denying that it is the hardest stage we have faced yet. But we can all take solace in the fact that if the web’s most talented people are fighting for their lives, then it’s okay if we do too.

That being said, let’s look at how we can tackle this Responsive beast.

Pick It Apart & Go One Element at a Time

When looking to design responsively, we tend to take on more than we can chew. If you’re looking to build out a new Responsive site, break it down into elements that you can master one-by-one. If you need to try using SVGs for the first time, start by exporting your logo from Illustrator as an SVG and open it with a code editor to remove the built-in width and height dimensions.

If you’ve decided on using a Responsive navigation, just isolate your navigation and focus on getting your “hamburger”, or 3-line navigation, working properly through JavaScript. If you’re looking to perfect your video, typography or images, just start by mastering Fitvids.js or Fittext.js, and take it one step at a time. That is how you eat an elephant after all, and Responsive Design is exactly that.

Write About It with No Shame

Another key point that I keep hearing over and over again from the people I respect in this space, is that writing about your experiences is the best way to work through your own challenges. The caveat here is that you have to be completely unashamed about being wrong. No one has all of the answers and most designers aren’t judging because they have the same challenges, so there is really nothing to fear.

The truth is that we are part of the best industry in the world and if you approach your writing and learning like this, you’re more likely to find someone willing to help you work through things. Try it; next time you’re stuck on something, write about it and post it on Twitter. You’ll be amazed at the number of good people willing to help.

Follow Paravel

There are many different designers that I would encourage you to follow to help you on your Responsive journey, but I think they all would agree with me that there is one group of three chaps that you absolutely must follow: Paravel.

Trent Walton, Dave Rupert, and Reagan Ray have single-handedly led the charge for Responsive Design. They were the ones that created Fitvids.js, Fittext.js, and Lettering.js with the help of our friend Chris Coyier. They recently redesigned Microsoft.com and many other Responsive sites, and they’ve been paramount in identifying, working through and writing about the challenges of Responsive Design when it matters most.

What It All Means

One day we’ll look back at this age of the web and be proud that we had the opportunity to be pioneers in this space. We don’t have it all figured out, but that is the beauty of it. Part of our journey is that we will never know it all and that hunger for knowing more will drive us throughout our careers. Learn everything you can, but more importantly, put it into action. Write about your experiences and let the open and collective web help you figure it all out. We are in this together and we need to have all of your voices heard.

Happy designing.

The post I Have No Idea What I'm Doing with Responsive Web Design appeared first on Treehouse Blog.