Kylie Bane '23 is a senior English and Math double major pursuing a PWTC certificate. Here, she describes her internship experience with ISO New England, a clean-energy nonprofit. View Kylie’s LinkedIn profile to learn more or to connect with her.
How did you find your internship?
ISO New England visited UMass and spoke to a class that my boyfriend was taking last spring. He asked if they had any business-related internship positions open for the summer because he knew I was actively searching for a local summer internship. The representative explained that they needed a wide variety of skills at ISO New England and handed him a brochure (PDF) that let me know how to apply. Two interviews later, I was offered a position in their Transmission Strategies department. If anyone is interested in pursuing a position in their internship program next summer, I suggest checking out the job listing!
What is ISO New England?
ISO New England is a not-for-profit corporation that is responsible for keeping electricity flowing throughout New England. They are currently focused on renewable energy projects that will help New England meet its clean energy goals.
Can you tell me more about your internship responsibilities?
I had the opportunity to work on two special projects, along with my day-to-day responsibilities.
The first special project consisted of working with roughly 200 interconnection agreements from 2012-2022 that needed to be posted to the public website. To complete this project, I pored over the interconnection agreements themselves and various spreadsheets of data in order to categorize and then post them to the website. You can see the results of this project on ISO New England’s Interconnection Agreements webpage.
The second special project consisted of a 100-page user guide that is aimed at customers who need to submit interconnection requests. This guide is being updated to match the current UI (user interface). I tested and made suggestions regarding the usability of the guide, editing for meaning, grammar, and audience.
As for my day-to-day activities, they consisted mostly of meetings and contracts. I shadowed my manager while she spoke with customers and transmission owners about their projects. Oftentimes, one of the action items following these meetings would involve ISO New England sending the customer a contract to read over and sign before the next steps could be taken. My job was to add the technical data and company information into these contracts so they could be sent over to the customer in a timely manner. In addition to this, customers are required to send milestone updates to the project managers every quarter. My job was to update the customer’s project information on our internal website according to these quarterly milestone updates.
What stood out to you about the work you were doing?
The direct impact I made on the customer experience, for sure. By posting the interconnection agreements to the public website, I made it much easier for customers with Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII) access to view these agreements at any time without needing to wait on the project managers at ISO New England to reply to them. By working on the user guide, I improved the readability of a tool that provides essential information to customers who are trying to use our system to submit their interconnection requests. By drafting up contracts, I was able to quickly and accurately provide customers with what they needed to continue the challenging process of getting their project onto the grid. By updating milestone information in our system, I was able to help customers identify what steps needed to be undertaken next and whether they were falling behind schedule. Ultimately, all the work I did this summer had a direct impact on the customer experience at ISO New England, which went a long way towards making me feel like a valued member of my department.
How did you draw on your experiences as an English major during your internship?
I drew on my experiences as an English major every day during my internship. The discussion-based English classes at UMass Amherst give students the opportunity to become more confident and fluent at explaining their ideas to others. In an office environment, many projects and tasks are a collaborative effort, so being able to explain your thoughts and ideas in a coherent manner is essential. Without my experiences as an English major, I would not be nearly as proficient at collaborating with others.
What skills did you develop during your internship?
For one, working at ISO New England this summer has made me feel more confident in my technical writing skills. I have worked on user guides in my technical writing classes at UMass Amherst, but having the chance to contribute to an active user guide at a big company is a different experience. Instead of having full control over the user guide, I got to experience working as a team on a user guide, allowing me to see how multiple people’s ideas put together creates a better product than one person could create on their own. On a different note, I had no experience working with contracts prior to this internship. After spending the entire summer poring over interconnection agreements and inserting information into various contracts, I feel confident in my ability to parse through legal terminology to find what I need. Also, for the first week of the internship, ISO New England provided me with online training that explained how the company worked and the specific tools I needed to use for my role. This made me feel confident when approaching my special projects and day-to-day tasks in the weeks that followed.
Any last thoughts about your internship?
Overall, my time at ISO New England confirmed that I am incredibly passionate about improving the user experience. My favorite part of this internship was working on the user guide, which leads me to believe that I would feel most fulfilled in a UX position. The technical writing and communication skills that I further developed during this internship will go a long way towards helping me reach this goal.
