Current Award Recipient

Cooperative Education Student Achievement Award

Alison Walasinski – The Ohio State University

Alison Walasinski is a fourth-year honors undergraduate student at The Ohio State University studying Chemical Engineering. At Ohio State, she is involved as an undergraduate teaching assistant for a chemical engineering course where she holds office hours and help students understand how to evaluate a variety of separation processes including distillation, absorption, and membrane filtration. Alison is also a leader in Phi Sigma Rho, a sorority on campus for women in STEM and a leader in Engineering Ambassadors. The latter, is an organization where they give tours and host recruitment events for incoming engineering students in hopes of recruiting an exceptional and diverse class of engineers.

Professionally, Alison interned in summer 2015 with Parker Hannifin in the Engineered Materials Group where she worked on advanced polymer research in a Case Western Reserve laboratory as well as on Arduino electronics development for a new medical device. In spring and summer 2016, she was a co-op for The J.M. Smucker Company which not only reaffirmed her choice in degree but realigned her career path and passions beyond the classroom. In this role she worked as a coffee process research and development co-op where she explored the effects of various processing techniques to minimize production cost while maintaining and improving flavor. Alison returned to Smucker in spring and summer 2017 at the Sahale Snacks facility in Seattle, WA as an operations co-op where she led a project team working on optimizing operating procedures to reduce allergen cleaning time while maintaining proper cleaning quality. She also created a change management program in the plant meant to ensure all affected parties were aware of all plant changes. Alison will be returning to The J.M. Smucker Company this summer at their legacy production facility in Orrville, OH.