1. September 14, 2016
Dear Prospective Employer,
It is my sincere pleasure to provide this letter of recommendation for Michael Burger. Michael
just finished a summer internship with our company where he did a great job. I wholeheartedly
believe he has a highly successful future as an engineer ahead of him.
I have been our division's main supervisor for interns and rotational engineers for the past 4
years. I have twenty years of experience in project engineering for custom capital equipment
manufacturing at both General Electric and Air Liquide. Michael definitely has impressed me
with his engineering skills, capacity to learn, and exemplary work ethic.
Michael tackled everything we gave him with enthusiasm. He burned through what I thought
would take most of a month in less than a week. The best example of this was when I ran out
things for him to work on one day. I grabbed fluid flow orifice tables I had tacked to the cube
wall and asked him to develop a spreadsheet that would auto-calculate orifice sizing for gasses
and liquids (including fluid property affects) that could be an official design output. I gave him
about 10 minutes background and expectations. I thought it would take at least a day. He had
it done before lunch.
The next week, we received feedback from a customer that they would like more support for an
interconnecting process line between the process cabinet and its day tank. We gave this design
project to Michael. He designed the bracket and created 3D solid models of the installation.
The day tank lid has two orientation possibilities, so the design had to incorporate both
orientations. He completed most of the design work himself and directed a CAD designer on
modifying the tank design drawings. He created the retrofit kit bill structures. We shipped the
kits to the customer who was very pleased on how it worked.
The biggest example of his character and drive is what he did in between assignments. I didn't
see him on his phone or Facebook once, a rarity for summer interns. He took it on himself to
improve his Solidworks skills. He worked with several of our CAD designers. He spent any open
time going through the detailed Solidworks design tutorials. Most mornings, he was already
half way through a Solidworks lesson, ready for the day's assignments (because he already
finished everything from the day before).
At the conclusion of his internship, the other managers and I conspired to fill out his evaluation
to ensure our corporate would extend him a permanent job offer. We all agreed that we'd
want him as part of our team.

2. In short, Michael is a great engineer. He will be a valuable contributor to any organization. He
completed everything from process design standards to design of experiment to CAD models to
installation work instructions to engineering database management. Frankly, I got to go home
early pretty much every day of his internship, because he did half of my work for me. If we
don't give him a permanent offer, it will truly be our loss and your gain. Please feel free to
contact me, mark.perschnick@airliquide.com, 952-917-5260.
Sincerely,
Mark Perschnick
Sr. Project Manager
Advanced Equipment Systems
Air Liquide Electronics U.S. LP
BS of Chemical Engineering, Iowa State University, '96.
mark.perschnick@airliquide.com
952-917-5260