Guy Greathouse '20 Guy Greathouse ’20I am a computer science major and plan on graduating in December 2020. I was an installations intern at Apogee Telecom, higher education’s largest managed technology services provider.

From mid-May until August 9, 2019, I worked with four lead installers from the company on various job sites. I worked in Eureka, Illinois, installing a new ResNet and administration network on the campus of Eureka College. I also worked on Apogee’s largest installation project at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I worked there for two weeks installing a brand new ResNet network on their campus. I then went out to Los Angeles to work on another project at the University of California Irvine. This was a new construction project, meaning that we had to work around a lot of contractors and construction workers. This job took only two weeks, so I ended the summer back in Pittsburgh for another three weeks, finishing up the University of Pittsburgh project. 

Some of the challenges I think I overcame were the long hours that I had to work. Usually, a typical day looks like waking up in the morning at around 6:00 a.m. for breakfast. Then, after that, we head out the door to the trailer where our equipment was located. Once we got our equipment ready for the first half of the day, we would head off to the site at which we were installing our access points (APs) and switches. Once we finished a building or two, depending on the site, we would head out to lunch for about 45–60 minutes. We would then continue doing the same process until all our APs and switches were up on mounts. This would usually span a couple of days. Then, we would have to use troubleshooting skills to fix any APs that were down. There were various issues with these APs, whether it was just changing out a patch cord or having to call the engineering team to help up find out what the problem was. So these days would turn into long days, roughly 12–15 hour days usually. However, I didn’t mind it after a day or two on the job.

Guy Greathouse '20

After this was all said and done, I felt like I had a good grasp on how Wi-Fi and cable networks were created and put into action. I have a better understanding of what I am looking for in a company as I complete my college career and move on to searching for a career.

I just would like to thank Apogee Telecom for giving me this opportunity to see what I might want to do in the future.


This fall, Greathouse will continue working for Apogee, this time on the Southwestern campus as a paid field service representative. Southwestern appreciates its partnership with Apogee Telecom: SU was Apogee’s first client, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration through this new partnership, which will provide future experiential-learning internships for Southwestern students.