Madeleine F. Jennings - 2016 Intern Scholar

My family and I would like to thank AIST for this generous scholarship and the opportunities that it affords us. Being a recipient has helped us immensely with college expenses. Since this scholarship required an internship with a steel or industry-related company, I decided to intern at CMC Steel Texas in the meltshop. This is my third term with CMC, and I enjoy it more and more every day. My mentors are incredibly supportive and are always excited to answer any question that I may have. During the time I have worked with CMC, I have been involved in a variety of process improvement projects. Last summer as I became acquainted with the shop, I began working on ladle life and slag improvement and became very involved with refractory.

 
 
Madeleine Jennings completed her internship at CMC Steel Texas. 

I also led a study designed to track steel cleanliness and performance versus the amount of final rinse stirring time allocated at the ladle furnace. CMC was incredibly supportive in allowing me to publish and present the results of my study at AISTech 2016. Over Christmas break, I continued my research on this study, and dug deeper into my knowledge of ladle life and slag treatment. This summer I was assigned to develop a training and certification program for our refractory department. In addition, I continued with my research into ladle life, slag treatment and desulfurization at the ladle furnace. CMC has been gracious enough to send me and a colleague to their Arizona location to learn about their ladle desulfurization and slag treatment practices to bring back and implement in Seguin. I also worked with the engineering department to help develop a model to optimize and control superheat in the tundish. Smaller projects included my involvement in the design of a new descaler system for the caster as well as auditing and suggesting improvements for various systems, practices, and tools that CMC has implemented. It’s said that once you get a taste of it, steelmaking is in your blood forever. I couldn’t agree more. The more time I am exposed to the steel industry, the more I fall in love with it. There’s a lot to be said of an industry that is so involved in safety culture, camaraderie and that is so eager to share their passion of steelmaking with young people, which is very much my favorite part of my experience so far. I feel I have found my niche, and I look forward to my career in the steel industry after graduation. This award, as well as the enormous amount of support that I have received from CMC and the industry itself, has certainly fueled my steelmaking fire. So again, thank you all.