Perry, a Delta College mechatronics student, spent part of his summer in Houghton through the Michigan College and University Partnership Scholars Program, or MICUP. The program gives community college students the opportunity to spend seven weeks conducting research alongside Michigan Tech faculty and experts.
For Perry, the opportunity was hard to pass up.
“I like robotics and I like money, so I’m going to check it out,” he joked about first seeing the program. “It was just a really huge opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.”
His research put that longtime interest to work. Perry helped program a robotic arm for autonomous repair with potential space applications, with much of the programming and simulation falling to him.
It wasn't easy. But that was part of the point.
“You have to really savor the incremental progress of things, and that has done wonders for the way I look at homework, the way I look at personal projects, the way I look at a lot of things,” he said. “Now, no matter how small the victory is in whatever I’m doing, I really appreciate the fact that this is further than where I was when I started.”
Along the way, pieces of his Delta education started clicking into place. Programming, computer competencies, HVAC and even his work experience in IT all became useful parts of a much bigger project.
The experience stretched beyond the lab, too. Perry lived on campus, built friendships with other scholars and capped the program by presenting his research. Something he admitted brought plenty of nerves.
But after seven weeks of doing the work, he knew he could talk about it.
“The hard part was sitting there working on it. The hard part was the nights you spent looking at a screen, trying to figure out the answers to the problems. That was the hard part,” he said. “You know what to do. You know how you did it. The only thing left to do is explain how to a bunch of people.”
And when it was time to leave Michigan Tech, Perry left more certain about taking
his next steps.
By Mikaila Bluew, writer & editor
