Written by sports communications intern - Sidney Rayba 

 Marcus Nellum, a track and field standout and an NCAA Division I East Preliminaries qualifier, is taking on a new role with Nexteer Automotive as an intern for the manufacturing simulation engineering department. The Industrial and Systems Engineering major sat down to discuss how his new roles and responsibilities translate to the life of a student-athlete.

Do you feel that the dynamics of college athletics have prepared you for your internship?

The dynamics of college athletics have prepared me for this internship through time management, responsibility, and communication with others. I also believe that certain leadership values that I have developed in my college athletic career have transferred over to the workplace. Lastly and most importantly, I learned is that as long as I put my 100-percent effort into something, I can overcome any obstacle that faces me.

What are you looking to do after college?

Plain and simple, simulation engineering. I feel that this internship with Nexteer Automotive is taking me in the right direction.  

What are your roles and responsibilities within your internship?

My internship's main roles and responsibilities are working with plant simulation (software) and process simulation (software) to ensure human safety while also finding issues within certain manufacturing processes before they actually happen. Whenever an engineer at a certain plant in our company has a problem, whether it's human safety, parts not being delivered on time, or parts breaking, my job is to re-create the scenario on the simulation software and find the problem. I solve the problem and then give the engineer the formula to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

How do you feel Oakland university has prepared you for your role at Nexteer automotive?

Oakland University has prepared me for my internship with classes such as simulation engineering and human factors engineering. I learned how to use plant simulation and process simulation through those classes, two critical software that I use during my internship. Those classes have given me the knowledge to know how to navigate both software, which provides me with an edge over the other interns on the same team. Lastly, OU helped accelerate my learning curve because I didn't have to waste time learning the basics of the software during my internship.

What have been some of your greatest successes so far within your internship?

One of my greatest success moments would have to be assisting my team on a simulation where we worked with an unclassified part with General Motors.