Gavin Wentz ‘26 shares his internship experience with Metso and how the work he has done has allowed him to discover a new interest within his major.
Among the many companies and organizations that offer internships and hire York College of Pennsylvania students and graduates, one notable corporation is Metso, a business known for providing products and services to the mining and metal refining industries.
"For over a decade, Metso's York office has proudly hosted students from York College of Pennsylvania and provided valuable co-op and internship experiences,” said Johanna Espamer, the Senior Human Resources Generalist at the Metso location in York. “Several are now thriving in permanent roles in our company."
One of their most recent interns from York College is Gavin Wentz ‘26, a Mechanical Engineering major. The opportunity has allowed him to not only gain valuable experience as he prepares for graduation, but it has also opened his eyes to the possibilities of what he can accomplish within his major, specifically in data analytics.
The Logistics
Gavin’s internship with Metso began in May 2025 and lasted until late August. He worked for their pricing and estimation team on predictive modeling, specifically for the costs of their products.
“Essentially, Metso purchases equipment and materials from a vendor that they own the IP to, which they then sell to a client at a markup,” Gavin said. “The price of things fluctuates, especially with raw material cost, geopolitical events, and global economic conditions. So we were looking at predicting the cost of certain parts that we get from vendors, and that’s done using basic regression modeling.”
Now that he has returned to school, Gavin continues to work part-time for the company, doing similar work as before with a more flexible schedule.
Towards the end of the summer, Gavin was able to play a more developer-focused role and assist the efficiency of one of their internal teams by helping them develop a new form for completing their manual data entries. He has been focusing on this work while at school, but he hopes to transition back to modeling-related work soon.
Finding What Works for Him
Gavin chose to pursue an internship with Metso after completing his co-op requirements for his engineering degree. He had previously completed a co-op at Metso, focusing on more engineering-related work, developing tools for calculations for some of their equipment, and assisting with pricing parts in their GLP (global list price). He also did a co-op at Walton & Company, a local mechanical contractor, where he completed analytical work, shadowed a project manager, traveled around job sites, and even helped manage projects.
The experiences taught Gavin a lot, but during his time with them, he began to think about what he specifically wanted to accomplish with his degree and the work he wanted to do in the future.
“I realized I wanted to branch out from engineering a little bit more, and data analytics was the field I was looking to get experience in,” Gavin said. “I saw that Metso had a posting for a data analyst intern, and that got me really excited because I did an internship with Metso before, so I figured that, at the very minimum, they would see that and notice me as a possible candidate for the internship.”
Prior to returning to Metso, Gavin considered shifting his focus to more data analytics work. So, he spent much of his time researching ways to determine what skills were valuable and what his resume needed to look like to obtain those roles.
Gavin was able to take the positive experiences and skills he obtained from his previous internships and use them to his advantage. He still wishes to be involved in engineering, but found that there were other aspects of the degree that he enjoyed the most and wanted to explore more.
As he hoped, Gavin found that working for Metso has been great. His favorite part about working there is how adaptable the company is and how considerate they have been of his school schedule. He loves the people he worked with over the summer and enjoys what he does daily. He loves showing up to work every day, talking with his coworkers, and throwing himself into new tasks and projects to work on.
From the Classroom to the Workplace
Gavin found that the nature of data science and analytics is very supplemental within an organization like Metso. At their core, their focus was on optimizing processes and identifying ways to ensure that everything ran as smoothly as possible.
“It’s very supplemental to other teams within the organization, so a lot of what we did was for the benefit of other internal groups at the company,” Gavin said.
Having worked there before, Gavin was already familiar with many of the people he interacted with. At the same time, he met many new people there. Within his group, he worked with one intern and three full-time employees, including his manager, with whom he had the opportunity to network and hear about their previous experiences, a perfect setting for networking. He also collaborated with other people from different groups within the company he was assisting.
When considering his post-graduate plans, Gavin believes he will likely pursue a career related to analytics. Working with programs such as Excel is his passion and something he feels he can do really well, so he will put all his energy into what he does best.
“I think that’s one of the things I kind of grew to realize about future jobs and internships is that your major doesn’t necessarily have to silo you into one thing,” Gavin said. “If you’re interested and you’re competent in software that exists outside of your major, then you can apply that expertise to other fields.”
Excel can be used everywhere, but working in Power BI or programming in Python is more unique to data science and analytics. That’s something Gavin picked up from his own exploration.
His work in his college classes has been instrumental in helping him build a solid foundation of skills and knowledge on the matter. His analytical classes, which focused on math and programming, were especially helpful, particularly in learning computational methods and logical sequences.
Looking Back on the Internship
When it comes to his biggest takeaways from the internship, Gavin shared that he thinks if a person is eager and interested enough in a specific type of work and is willing to take the time to learn how to master it, then they can accomplish it if they apply themselves.
It can be difficult for people who want to get into something that may not be related to their major, and sometimes, they can feel as though they are limited by their major, and that’s all they can do from now on. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
For Gavin, his circumstances aligned nicely, allowing him to learn new skills and build on what he already knew from his prior experiences. It made being able to pivot to the more analytical side of things easier for him.
“Me being a mechanical engineering major, that is typically not a major that you would find in data science or analytics,” Gavin said. “Usually, you see statistics or computer science, and some schools even now have data science programs.”
Even when considering pursuing a co-op that fits an interest an individual may not be completely proficient in, showing up to career fairs and exploring what options are available for interns can make a huge difference and even open doors.
Be personable and sociable, but don’t be surprised by rejection. Especially in technology fields that are competitive, individuals should be prepared for many “no’s” before finally getting that “yes” they have been waiting for. But it only starts by putting oneself out there and taking that chance.
“But as far as big takeaways, I would say if you can apply yourself and get really good at something that you’re interested in, it doesn’t necessarily have to be exactly what your major charts out for you,” Gavin said.
