Where will I work and what will I do?
To describe their work, some say instrumentation technicians are to industry what physicians are to humans. Instrumentation Technicians are employed in every type of industry; food, health, space, semiconductor, chemical, mining, petroleum, nuclear, and utilities, just to name a few.
A typical day could involve making routine maintenance checks using computers or, in contrast, it could involve intense trouble shooting when the facility is having control problems.
Many major companies recruit from the Instrumentation program. Following are just a few of them.
Chemical Industry
Seventy percent of Simplot’s Electrical & Instrument department is ISU IA graduates. Monsanto, Agrium, General Chemical, and OCI also hire.
- Monsanto
- Simplot
- Agrium
Food Industry
Food companies such as Heinz, Simplot, Lamb Weston, Amalgamated Sugar, and Jerome Cheese hire graduates of the ISU IA program. Sixty-seven percent of Heinz Electrical & Automation Technicians are from ISU Instrumentation Automation.
- Simplot
- Conagra.
- Glanbia
- Heinz
Manufacturing facilities
IA graduates are employed at ATK building space shuttle engines, INOVAR, Campbell Scientific, Varian, Clear Water Paper, Intel, Micron, ON and others.
Mining Industry
ISU IA graduates are employed at Thompson Creek Idaho, Still Water Platinum operation in Montana, Newmont, Barrick, and Battle Mountain gold operations in Nevada, Fairbanks Gold (Ft Knox) in Alaska, Trona operations in Wyoming, and others.
- Barrick Monsanto
- Fairbanks Gold
National Labs
The program is the primary source of technicians at a number of Idaho National Lab sites. Four recent graduates are in the INL Material Fuels Complex (MFC) and a total of 50 % of MFC Technicians are graduates of the ISU Instrumentation Automation. In addition, 67% of Advance Test Reactor (ATR) Technicians are from ISU Instrumentation Automation. In addition to the INL, other national labs hiring ISU IA graduates include the Sandia facility in Albuquerque, NM, Bechtel, and Lawrence Livermore in Los Alamos, CA.
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
- Sandia National Laboratory
- Nevada National Laboratory Bechtel
- Las Alamos National Laboratory
Natural Gas and Petroleum Companies
Companies like Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Williams, Kinder Morgan, and Alyeska Pipeline hire ISU IA graduates.
Public Utility
Four Instrumentation Automation graduates are in their technical apprenticeships with Idaho Power, three started with Constellation. DTE Energy, Nevada Power, Pacific Power and other power facilities hire from the program.
- Idaho Power
Semi Conductor Company
- Micron, Inc.
- AMIS
- Intel