Internship Award Program Opens Doors for Students

Janae Dorsey (pictured above) already knows her plans for the summer. The rising junior will spend 10 weeks in an AT&T internship program working with a computer software team.

Dorsey is one of 10 students embarking upon summer internships thanks to support through the College of Charleston Career Center Internship Award (CCIA) program. Under this unique program, students not only receive a stipend to help defray the cost of their internships, but they also receive an educational framework to help them make the most of their internship experience. The internship award program is designed to provide students with an academic credit or non-credit summer internship and is open to all rising sophomores and juniors regardless of their major.

Kristin Wichmann, experiential learning coordinator for the Career Center, says the program helps identify and create internship opportunities and supports students seeking to apply classroom learning to real-world work environments.

“We take them through résumés, cover letters, networking, how to interview and how to maximize your experience at a job fair,” she says. “It’s a very involved process where we really want to teach these students the skills that they need, not only just for an internship, but for when they go to find another job or another internship.”

This cohort-style learning environment supports students through a series of professional development trainings intended to help students plan for, engage in, and reflect upon their internships.

The CCIA program includes the following elements for students:

Coaching for summer internship search strategies and application process

Students meet with the Career Center’s internship coordinator to identify specific internship opportunities that meet their interests and goals

Tailored professional development trainings leading up to structured summer internships

Dorsey, who is a double major in computer science and African American studies, says the program gave her an advantage when it came to finding an internship. And she’s confident the internship this summer will help her with her career path.

“I really aspire to be a software developer or software engineer, but I think with computer science, I can do a variety of different things,” she says. “I wanted this internship to kind of see what I like and what I don’t like.”

The CCIA program is possible due to a generous donation from an alumnus’ family.

Other students participating in this summer’s Career Center Internship Award program include:

Bader Al-Ahmad
Finance Major
Incoming Asset Management Group Intern at PNC in Orlando, Fla.

Toni Allison
Molecular Biology Major in the Honors College
Participant in the Medical University of South Carolina’s (MUSC) Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) – Charleston, S.C.

Adriana Apintiloaiei
Marine Biology Major in the Honors College
Intern with the Fort Johnson Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program in Charleston, S.C.

Barbara Condron
Computing in the Arts Major
IT Student Intern at BlueCross BlueShield in Columbia, S.C.

Rowan Emerson
Marine Biology Major in the Honors College
Sustainability Intern at Heron Farms in Charleston, S.C.

Ashanti Long
Computer Science Major
Client Services PC Lab Intern for the Department of the Navy in Virginia Beach, Va.

Noah Williams
Arts Management Major
Art Collections Assistant at MUSC’s Arts in Healing Program in Charleston, S.C.

Cameron Wilson
International Studies and Political Science Double-Major in the Honors College
Reality Tours Intern at Global Exchange in San Francisco, Calif.

Charlie Forstein
International Studies and Psychology Double-Major in the Honors College
To be announced