Meet Jungle Jim’s inaugural intern Shreya Gohee
Engineering Management senior creates opportunity to help map store layouts with AutoCAD
Meet Jungle Jim’s inaugural intern Shreya Gohee
Engineering Management senior creates opportunity to help map store layouts with AutoCAD
Video by Zach Burnett, Cameron Johnson, and Jessica Miller
There’s no grocery store in the world quite like Jungle Jim’s International Market and few people have seen as many sides of it as Engineering Management senior Shreya Gohee. Gohee’s first introduction to the store, known as an Ohio landmark, came through a consulting project in one of her classes.
She was immediately inspired to reach out to Phill Adams, Jungle Jim’s director of development, and ask about potential internship opportunities, but there was just one small problem. The store had never officially offered internships.
So how does someone become Jungle Jim’s first-ever intern?
“When I reached out to Phill, we got to talking and he was trying to find what I was best fit for,” Gohee said. “And when we started off, it was AutoCAD (a computer-aided design software program) and what engineering opportunities there are working with that. Which further down the line he said, ‘Oh, I need help for AutoCAD,’ and this is where I came in.”
Modeling the market
AutoCAD, developed by Autodesk, is used for precise drafting, design, and modeling. The software makes it possible to take a 2D line drawing of a room and turn it into a 3D model for planning. In Gohee’s role as an engineering management corporation intern, she uses it to map out the store layouts. With over 200,000 square feet of retail space and 70 countries worth of international products available at Jungle Jim’s, this is no easy task.“For example, we are going to develop and change the meat department, but it's hard to go down there and move cases and equipment,” Gohee said. “So, on AutoCAD you make the realistic square footage and you can move equipment how it would go (realistically) and you can (determine that) this will not fit here.”
This saves invaluable amounts of time and effort when there are factors like plumbing, the fire code, underground manufacturing, and many other variables to consider. From floor to ceiling, every detail in the store must be accounted for in any redesign or expansion effort. But using a variety of skills to work on a project comes easily to Gohee, who also has a minor in Entrepreneurship.
“At Miami I learned that communication works together with technical skills,” she said. “Since my mind is on entrepreneurship, it relates every technical engineering (operation) to a business operation too.”
A new dream come true
Gohee’s dream career was originally to work with a Formula One auto racing team, but the more time she spent at Jungle Jim’s, the more she realized how much she enjoyed the operations side of engineering. Now it’s a job she sees herself wanting to keep for the next few years.“It's a real-life experience and that's an honor to me because I've been given so much responsibility,” Gohee said. “I know they trust me and they believe in what I do, but also one of my favorite parts is moving my little models, making them 3D, printing it and making everything realistic.”
Gohee originally hails from Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. In her own words, her first year on campus and in the United States was overwhelming. But a self-starter attitude is what led her to take a chance to build her own dream internship, and it’s also what led her to attend school over 10,000 miles away from her home. The diverse culture there is what led her to feel so at ease in Jungle Jim’s busy environment and at Miami.
“I've met some amazing people, amazing friends that have actually turned out to be family now and I wouldn’t change anything,” Gohee said. “And I look back and say, ‘I can't believe you did it, but it's amazing.’”