Jason Serbin spent his summer programming innovative quality assurance solutions for Pine Instruments in Grove City. Serbin, a Slippery Rock University junior computing major from Altoona (Altoona HS) began his relationship with Pine two summers ago at the suggestion of Sam Thangiah, professor of computing and security.
Since then, Serbin worked as summer help in the company’s IT department. Serbin said that while that position wasn’t a role he preferred, it was necessary to get his foot in the door in hopes of getting to do the computer programming work he was interested in.
Pine Instruments, whose name and equipment is known world-wide, provides oversight and administrative support to three Pine Companies: Pine Electronics, Inc., Pine Research Instrumentation, Inc., and Pine Test Equipment, Inc.
After seeing his performance in his IT position, his supervisors at Pine liked Serbin so much that they asked him back for an official internship, working on their enterprise resource planning system.
In his internship, Serbin programmed a system to automate Pine’s defect reporting system, a necessary element for quality control of the circuit boards that Pine produces. Serbin said that the programming skills that he used for the system he created were skills that he learned in his classes at SRU.
He also added that the practical use of those skills over the summer will serve as a good steppingstone for the higher-level, project-based programming classes at SRU that he has on the horizon, particularly an artificial intelligence class he’s taking this year that requires him to propose a project as his final.
In addition to developing his programming skills at Pine, Serbin also got to advance his interpersonal skills such as communication and meeting the needs of a team.
An internship has proven to bean excellent opportunity for students like Serbin to bridge the gaps between their classroom studies and their future careers, and Serbin looks forward to continuing to do just that with renewed confidence in his abilities.
More information about computing programs at SRU is available on the department’s webpage.
