Co-ops in the Dana Research Center Prepare Alumnus for a Successful Career
David Miller, E’71, MS’75, electrical engineering, transformed his childhood interest into a decades-long career. Recurring co-ops in Northeastern’s Dana Research Center taught him the electronic design principles and communication skills that became the foundation for his career successes.
When David Miller, E’71, MS’75, electrical engineering, was 12 years old, his sister’s girlfriend’s boyfriend gifted him a stack of electronics magazines. Absorbing the material sparked an interest in Miller, inspiring him to create and experiment with parts he would buy from Radio Shack. “I’d go down and buy parts to put together little radios,” says Miller. “That just got me psyched about electrical engineering.”
Miller continued exploring his passions independently through high school, using the electronics magazines to inspire his next projects. Coupled with his rigorous education at Boston Latin School, Miller’s childhood experiences thoroughly prepared him to study electrical engineering in higher education.
Following in his sister’s footsteps, Miller pursued Northeastern as his first choice of university. Having witnessed his sister benefit from her computer programming co-ops at Avco-Everett Research Laboratory, Miller knew early on that he wanted the opportunity to learn through industry experience. “I knew right off the bat that I wanted to go to a school with co-op,” he says. “Northeastern was it.”
All of Miller’s co-ops were in an electronics lab at Northeastern’s Dana Research Center, where equipment was designed for the U.S. Air Force and NASA. Working at Northeastern for co-op was not something Miller had considered prior. Still, his terms at Dana Research Center gave him important technical knowledge that helped kickstart his postgraduate career and afforded him additional benefits from staying on campus.
From the beginning of his first co-op, Miller worked intimately with the laboratory equipment, performing tests for the Air Force to ensure the gear could withstand specific conditions. This allowed Miller to gain hands-on experience early on, teaching him design principles in the working world.
Miller’s co-ops provided a diverse and entertaining workload, giving him a well-rounded and engaging experience. He recalls a moment in his co-op when he traveled to New Mexico to witness the launching of a balloon for the Air Force; the telecommunication equipment was designed in the Dana Research Center. Witnessing the launch filled him with pride and allowed him to travel to a part of the country he had not explored prior. “Being in this flat desert, you could almost see to the ends of the Earth,” Miller says. “I had never seen anything like that before.”
The variety of educational experiences that stemmed from Miller’s work experience at the Dana Research Center encouraged him to return for his following co-ops. He was also enticed to stay after realizing he could fully immerse himself in the campus experience while working. “It was a win-win situation for me,” he says.
During his co-ops, Miller worked alongside a diverse group of professors, teaching assistants, and grad students. Quickly, he formed a sense of camaraderie with his co-workers, who would often engage Miller in out-of-lab activities such as lunchtime handball games in the Cabot Center gym, allowing him to fully integrate himself as a member of the team.
The close relationships Miller formed with his coworkers and mentors benefitted him greatly during his academic terms. He would often receive lectures from his work colleagues on content not covered in the classroom and could visit the lab while taking classes to ask for help on material related to his courses. “When I got back to the classroom, I was ahead,” Miller says. “I had a big leg up on other people.”
Miller’s lessons with the lab workers had impacts that extended beyond the classroom. While interviewing for a postgraduate role at Raytheon, the hiring manager asked Miller a complex technical question intended to stump him about a specific property of a transistor. The property was not covered in his academic lectures, but Miller could answer the question because he had reviewed the property in a lesson at the lab.
“I didn’t even hesitate. I spewed back everything I had learned from the teaching assistant,” Miller says. “The hiring manager literally jumped back in his chair and asked how I knew that. I got the job offer pretty quickly after that.”
Miller worked at Raytheon for over four years, starting in digital logic design. His experiences forming close relationships with his coworkers during co-op allowed him to navigate the working environment at Raytheon and raise concerns to his superiors. When tasked to debug circuit boards while most of Raytheon’s staff was on vacation, Miller learned to rely on himself and work independently, and his success in the task would change his career trajectory. “After that, it became a hallmark of my career,” he says. “The one thing I was known to be good at was debugging things.”
To further his career prospects, Miller returned to Northeastern to receive his master’s degree in electrical engineering. He left Raytheon shortly after completing his master’s program to focus more on hardware design, a career move that aligned more with the interests he possessed in his childhood. Throughout his hardware design career, Miller was given multiple opportunities to lead others, assisting employees in completing their projects. This earned him recognition from his supervisors and even a promotion to technical lead while working at Computervision.
Northeastern played a key role in Miller’s transition to software engineering. While working at Hewlett Packard, Northeastern provided on-site certification courses in Unix, C, and C++ programming. After 12 years at Hewlett packard Miller took a job at Iris Associates, developing the software for the office suite program Lotus Notes. Miller remained in this position for 16 years, including during Iris Associates’ purchase by IBM, before his retirement.
Through his work, Miller transformed his childhood interest into a diverse and fulfilling career. He credits co-op as the backbone of his successes, propelling him into the working world and giving him the tools to navigate it at an early age.
“Co-op really prepared me for the working world,” Miller says. “I wouldn’t have had such a successful career without it.”