Madison Vandergriff is the first member of her immediate family to attend college. Before she enrolled at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Vandergriff wasn’t sure what resources were available beyond the classroom to help students determine their career path. She was determined to get as much practical experience as possible in the nuclear industry.
Vandergriff has taken advantage of the Tickle College of Engineering’s robust internship and co-op opportunities through the Office of Engineering Professional Practice. The Knoxville native is working for her fourth company, serving as an intern this summer in fuel rod design at Westinghouse Nuclear in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“You truly don’t know what it means to work as a full-time engineer until you try it. Your school education is great, but you don’t really have a good idea of what a full-time position looks like until you are doing it,” said Vandergriff, a rising senior nuclear engineering major. “I always say, just try as many things as possible. Because when I started at UT, I had no idea what I wanted to do.”
Vandergriff has served previous internships with Boston Government Services and United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR). She also did a co-op for three alternating semesters at Southern Nuclear Company, where she worked in three different positions: BWR Fuels engineering, reactor engineering at Southern’s Plant Farley, and reactor engineering at Southern’s Plant Vogtle.
“I really wanted to get a good idea of the nuclear industry as a whole, and I think I’ve picked opportunities that let me see different sides of that,” Vandergriff said. “Each place I’ve been to I’ve tried new things and learned more about what those roles have to offer.”
Hands-on Experiences
During Vandergriff’s internship at Southern Nuclear Company’s Plant Farley in Dothan, Alabama, in the summer of 2022, she played an active role in the receipt and inspection of nuclear fuel—supported by field work while accounting for special nuclear material (SNM) inventory. At Plant Vogtle, she also spearheaded an initiative to update a predictive tool that helps reactor engineers predict criticality coming out of a station outage.
“Madison’s tenacity and commitment really shined when she volunteered to support night shift for a reactor start-up related to a station outage,” said Vandergriff’s supervisor at Southern Nuclear, Madeleine Burrell (NE/BS ’19). “She participated in real-time communication between reactor engineers and reactor operators, all while applying reactor theory outside the classroom to observe a reactor reaching criticality.”
Burrell, a former Southern Nuclear co-op intern while at UT, believes the value of an internship at her company is “immeasurable” because of the hands-on experience students receive in the field of nuclear power generation.
“Between projects ownership, tailored mentorship, and diverse field work, our students are able to extrapolate engineering concepts from their classrooms into tangible industry results,” Burrell said. “Co-op and internship rotations are seen as ‘extended interviews’ within Southern Nuclear. In fact, a large portion of our full-time engineers are former co-ops and interns.”
Vandergriff’s current internship at Westinghouse involves working more on the vendor side of the nuclear business.
“I really like it a lot. My previous experience has fed into my understanding coming into this,” she said. “I had a little bit of the background knowledge from the utility side that’s helped me kind of hit the ground running here. I’m excited to be doing studies for potential new product lines, which I find interesting.”
Discovering a Career Path
Despite the lack of college experience in her family, Vandergriff was always encouraged to pursue higher education.
“Whenever I was young, my parents told me I was going to go to college. They saw my potential,” Vandergriff said. “I always had their full support, and we went through the process of applying for college for the first time together.”
Vandergriff plans to go into industry once she graduates from UT next spring. Her internship at Westinghouse has exposed her to the side of the nuclear industry that she enjoys most.
“I really didn’t know what path I would take before I started doing my internships,” Vandergriff said. “But I can say confidently that I actually know what work I find most fulfilling because I have done it instead of just reading about it on paper. I’ve experienced it.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)