BME student Steele becomes first Purdue student honored as CEED’s Intern of the Year
Hiking a mountain in Ireland was something that Ohio native Ali Steele had never considered when she arrived at Purdue University.
Being honored for an internship that involved hiking Croagh Patrick in Ireland was a different surprise entirely.
Steele will be honored as the National Student Intern of the Year by the Cooperative and Experiential Education Division (CEED) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Feb. 5-7 at the ASEE Conference in Henderson, Nevada. The award “recognizes one intern student who has made significant contribution to their internship” and includes a cash prize and participation in an industry and student panel as well as a poster session to share their work at the conference.
Steele was such an enthusiastic participant in the Global Engineering Alliance for Research and Education (GEARE) program through the Office of Professional Practice (OPP) that she stood out in her international internship at Fort Wayne Metals in Castlebar, Ireland. Steele is the first Purdue student and the first biomedical engineering intern to be recognized with the CEED award since its inception in 2012.
“It’s a wonderful bow on top of everything I’ve worked for,” Steele said.
The Purdue senior is praised as “pursuing excellence in academia and industry ... through her comprehensive involvement in BME, OPP, in industry and in the College of Engineering” by Jenny Strickland, associate director of cooperative education and career readiness and Steele’s former OPP work supervisor. “Ali is a student who is consistent in bringing creative thinking to academic activities, demonstrating distinctive problem-solving abilities.”
Students gain advantages in internships and future workplaces through experiences OPP provides. From professional and technical development to global work experience and language learning, students become career-ready for both domestic and international employment. GEARE combines industry work and international experience into one internship, as students are required to work one global internship.
Steele is excited to share her 11-week GEARE experience as a panelist in Henderson. Fort Wayne Metals provided substantial cultural and hands-on experience, crucial for Steele who arrived with only the desire to learn the necessary skills.
Steele’s interest in Purdue started with her first on-campus tour in West Lafayette. From a family almost entirely made of Ohio State Buckeyes, Steele became the lone Boilermaker when she was accepted to Purdue in 2020.
“It just felt comfortable (at Purdue). We ended up touring five times,” Steele said. “I told my parents I didn't know where I wanted to go to college and they looked at me and said, ‘No, you want to go to Purdue. You keep coming back to the GEARE program, the BME program.’”
They were right. Steele dove into on-campus involvement. She became a member of the Society of Women Engineers and the Biomedical Engineering Society. When she took ENGR 10300 (Introduction to Engineering in Professional Practice) as a first-year student, her course mentors and OPP instructors encouraged her to take advantage of the Co-op Program alongside the GEARE program because of its project depth. Ranked seventh of all college cooperative programs in the United States, Co-op students work with a professional engineer in industry for 12-20 paid months of experience throughout their time at Purdue. Steele credits her time in the Co-op Program with cultivating her ability to “show the willingness and the enthusiasm to learn” that many companies seek.
“Ali took the content from class and immediately began applying it,” said OPP associate director Joe Tort.
When Steele sought out an international internship through the GEARE program, Tort saw no better student to revive a connection to Fort Wayne Metals.
“Ali is the first GEARE student to work with Fort Wayne Metals in Ireland since the COVID pandemic,” Tort said.
Steele was in Ireland, getting acquainted to a new time zone and work culture, in May 2024.
Steele was paired with one of Fort Wayne Metals’ three in-house engineers. She worked on projects that included a variety of ways to test tensile strength, including dipping wires in acid solutions or welding different kinds of metals together.
While an internship that included welding may seem off-course for a biomedical engineering student, Steele saw relevant connections from the moment she first learned about Fort Wayne Metals. From her Co-op with DePuy Synthes in 2023, working through customer complaints and troubleshooting knee and hip replacements, she knew understanding metals would be crucial to her orthopedic career.
“When I was looking for an international internship, I knew that I didn't want to do anything cellular or pharmaceutical related,” Steele said. “Orthopedics are all metal-centered. It’s all steel and titanium, and Fort Wayne Metals is medical wire manufacturing. It was perfect for me to learn more about the material that medical devices are made from.”
The pace of life and community Steele had built in Ireland supported her in ways that she hadn’t considered in a work environment. Now, the Fort Wayne Metals work environment, featuring steady work-life balance and hiking the lofty Croagh Patrick with her comrades for charity — something that the company does annually to support families in need — has become a core value in Steele’s life after graduation.
In Ireland again.
Steele will pursue a master’s in biomedical engineering at the University of Galway in Galway, Ireland, beginning in September 2025. This would not have been a possibility, or even a thought, had Steele not been involved with OPP. And she has created a timeline and program for future students to use to obtain work visas and what to expect living abroad, a guide that Tort is certain will come in handy for every Fort Wayne Metals intern after Steele.
“(Her document timeline) will be utilized to inform and streamline the process for future students and employers,” he said.
Steele hopes to convey the endless possibilities that GEARE and the Co-op Program offered her to prospective students. As a Professional Practice ambassador, volunteer coordinator and a GEARE ambassador, she has plenty of wisdom — and excitement about Purdue — to share.
“I remember how (those events) helped me as a prospective student and how they drew me to Purdue,” Steele said. “It makes waking up early on Friday morning to go volunteer totally worth it, to see the look on everyone's faces when they find that the program is right for them.”