Undergraduate Awesome Summer Internships
August 20, 2012
Internships are a proven way to gain relevant knowledge, skills, and experience while establishing important connections in the field. In addition, internships help make students more competitive in the job market by adding real world involvement on their resume.
Special thanks to the following MIS undergraduates who shared comments about their awesome summer internships.
Cody Thornton reports, “I worked for the Enterprise Finance Process department in the corporate segment of The Walt Disney Company in Burbank, CA.
My team was the liaison between the end users/site sustainment leads and our DES/IBM IT team(s) (DES, Disney Enterprise Services). We supported 22,000 users in 140 countries.
The over-arching goal of the department was to strongly promote efficiency in all accounting/finance transactions/reports in SAP and to enhance these processes to make them maximally efficient. We dealt with situations ranging from daily troubleshooting issues to completely remodeling and remapping forms to tie into our general ledger.”
Sohum Jayesh Shah interned as an operations manager at Bing’s Boba Tea.
“This past summer I interned as an operations manager at Bing’s Boba Tea. Located in NW Tucson, this tea shop was started by two Eller graduates, David Calabrese and Bing Li (both Fall 2011 graduates).
I initially became involved with the business in January 2012 when David asked me if I would be interested in helping to get a new store launched in the Tucson area. I replied “yes” and the rest is history.
We first scouted out competitors and discovered that there are several restaurants that serve the tea, but none dedicated to boba tea. I then helped with market research by sitting outside of Lee Lee Oriental Market and counting foot traffic, because there was an open store space in the shopping center. After determining that this location would provide the demand necessary to succeed, I assisted with writing the business plan.
In late March 2012 David and Bing secured financing for the business and signed a lease I assisted them with minor contract work to get the store ready to open. After operating for a few months, David offered me the opportunity to help him over the summer with operations (beverage preparation) as well as business and operations management, marketing, etc.
Together, we planned and executed a marketing strategy that included advertising, a social media presence, as well as an event during the summer to promote the shop and spread the word. A column was written in The Tucson Weekly informing readers of our event. I then helped him hire and train employees for the academic year. Overall, it was an excellent opportunity to develop my skills in entrepreneurship, while helping fellow Wildcats and Eller graduates.“
Kyle LeMontang interned at Office Depot and reported, “During my summer internship with Office Depot, I was part of their eCommerce Business Performance Management Team at their global corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.
The highlight of my summer was giving a presentation to over 50 people (who included the company’s executive board) on future trends, innovations, and recommendations that I saw relevant to improving and growing the company’s eCommerce."
Marco Villarreal interned for the Schoeni Art Gallery in the Soho district of Hong Kong and states, "Schoeni has three separate galleries within this district and did not have an IT department established when I arrived. However by the time summer was over, I became the one-man-show and ran the gallery's entire IT department!
I was in charge of computer maintenance, server and network management, and software training. Numerous times during my internship, I would be called from all three galleries to fix a problem with a computer, the network, or I needed to teach staff/interns how to use software.
I was also put in charge of three projects which included: a documentary of five Hong Kong artists and their works, restructuring their image filing system on their server, and image formatting of 2000+ images that are going to be imported into Schoeni's new website. I delegated work to other interns and supervised them to make sure the work was done correctly. Overall, I gained a wealth of knowledge and experience at Schoeni Art Gallery.”
Sometimes summer internships end up not being what you hoped them to be. Nidhi Arora shares insights on summer internships that have gone bad.
“Acquiring an internship is an exciting moment for any aspiring business student however, that is only the first step in having an overall successful internship experience. For most interns, their internship will expose, challenge, and prepare them for a career within the organization and provide them with valuable connections. For others, the internship experience may prove to be less than what they expect of the organization and may even go on to disenchant students from their planned career paths.
As someone who has had both good and not-so-good internship experiences, I have learned that there are two things that can make any poor internship a better one; staying positive and making your own path. Truthfully, there aren’t many things you can control within your internship because ultimately HR and your internship department hold both the keys to your cubicle and the purse strings. Despite this, not all hope is lost— there is one thing that only you have the power to control: your attitude." Read the rest of Nidhi’s advise here.
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