Designed for Action: Student Discusses Muffler Design Being Used Currently in a Porsche Model

At York College, students aren’t just reading textbooks and listening to lectures. They’re working on community projects, solving real-world problems, and using their education to affect change. In Designed for Action, we meet the students who are making an impact outside the classroom.

Cole Medvesky ’23 is passionate about cars, so when he was offered an internship at Soul Performance Products in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, he was thrilled.

Cole, a Mechanical Engineering major, started his internship in May of 2020 creating muffler designs on Computer-Aided Design and Drafting (CADD) Systems and still works at Soul during breaks from school. Throughout his time at Soul, he has drafted several muffler concepts that are under development currently. One of his designs successfully went through development and is now being used on the Porsche 718 GT4.

Well prepared

Cole accredits his ability to work successfully with CADD Systems to his EPADS I and Intro to Mechanical Engineering courses.

Aside from his internship at Soul Performance Products, he has held two co-op positions.

Cole’s first co-op experience was with BAE Systems, where he worked with operators to correct manufacturing errors. Currently, he has a co-op with Graham Packaging – overseeing the production of plastic containers – that allows him the opportunity travel around the country to states such as Kentucky, Indiana, and Virginia.

“I help set up machines and run material trials…vendors come to watch the trials to see if their materials are processable on a larger commercial scale,” he says. 

The hands-on experience that the College offers in its Engineering program helped him to be comfortable in a shop environment. In his Machine Design classroom, Cole recounts a final project in which students had to design and fabricate a nutcracker that could crack a black walnut. “This project taught me about working in a team environment throughout the entirety of a project…we worked in small groups and saw the project through from start to finish.”

“I’m really glad, I chose York College. At first, I was searching for a bigger school, but the shop-like environment in the Kinsley School of Engineering allowed me to be more comfortable in the environments at my internships,” says Cole.