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November 9, 2006

Suit of a Different Color

Students from every department need internships, but not all will have you playing gophers

Story by: Justin Spike

The Shorthorn staff

The university’s 10 colleges and 35 departments provide ample opportunities for students to pursue their interests.

Internships span the breadth of these fields and train students in a variety of skills, from choosing a coffee shop’s decorating motif to testing military technology.

License to Design

Students interested in interior design should bear in mind that they must be licensed by the state to practice. A license requires completing an internship.

“Not only do they have to have a degree, but they have to have X number of hours working under a licensed professional before they can sit for their licensing exam,” said Becky Boles, interior design interim program director.

Many students hired as interns for companies are offered more permanent employment, and it becomes their first job, she said.

Interior design senior Meredith Fenton is interning for Starbucks in the store design and development department. She said her experience has prepared her for the demands of her career.

“I do anything from filing to picking out colors for stores,” Fenton said. “They give me a store, and then I pick from color palates, and I decide which colors go on the wall. I feel like it’s really going to give me an advantage when I go to another employer.”

Fenton, who was a barista at a Starbucks coffee shop for five years before interning for the company, said the interior design program at UTA doesn’t deal much with colors.

“This has forced me to get into the colors and see how colors work together and where to hang artwork,” she said.

Although there are no formal deadlines for submitting applications for interior design internships, the competition makes it necessary to apply well in advance to be considered, Boles said.

“It’s probably not a bad idea to get out there now for the summers,” she said. “It gets competitive because nationwide they’re looking for a lot of these big Dallas firms.”

See Behind the Scenes

Competition is also a factor in the broadcasting field. Communication assistant professor Andrew Clark said many broadcasters only hire a limited number of interns at a time, so it’s important to fervently pursue an internship.

He also said there have been students in the department who have been hired by TV stations immediately following their internships.

“I think it’s possible to get a job without an internship, but certainly if it was a head-to-head competition, employers would look more favorably upon the person with an internship,” Clark said.

Broadcast news senior Megan Whitley interned at 96.3 FM KSCS and currently interns at CBS 11. She heard about the opportunity through the UTA broadcasting program and wants to pursue on-air television broadcasting.

“It’s very good experience because, at school, you don’t learn what’s actually going on in the newsroom,” she said. “I wish it was more hands-on, but I think it is helping me understand what it’s all about.”

Whitley works an eight-hour day at CBS 11, where she observes what other employees do and works with different areas of the studio.

“I shadow whoever I’m put with for the day,” she said. “For the elections, I shadowed the assignment desk, and I got to [shadow] the producers for three weeks, and I’ll probably get to do the editors next week.”

The I in Team

The engineering field draws many new engineers straight from internships.

Carole Coleman, engineering co-op education coordinator, said interns do real engineering work, usually supervised by a single professional.

“It’s not where you’re setting up people to do filing and get coffee,” she said.

Engineering senior Joseph Yehle worked for DRS Technologies in Dallas on a co-op program last summer analyzing test data on infrared detectors, which are used on Apache helicopters and Abrams tanks. He said his experience made him more prepared to be competitive in engineering.

“It really showed me more of how the real engineering environment really works,” he said.

Yehle took part in meetings at the company that addressed what kinds of problems were occurring and what needed to be done to fix them, he said.

“We had to decide whether or not this is a good unit and if we should ship it out to someone buying it from us, or if it was a bad unit and we should throw it out,” he said.

According to the engineering newsletter The Co-op Connection, at UT-Austin, engineering graduates who participated in co-ops or internships made $7,000 more in their starting salary than those who had no internship experience.

“It’s learning more toward real experience than toward academic standing,” Yehle said.

Foot in the Door

Marketing internship coordinator Dan Gossett said there are many aspects of marketing, such as sales and advertising.

“Oftentimes these internships give them the opportunity to go into an industry that they want to go into,” he said.

Yukon Advanced Optics, a company that manufactures binoculars and weaponry scopes, recently hired marketing senior John Palmer for a sales position after a four-month internship. Palmer heard about the company through Gossett, who knew someone who interned there. Palmer thinks his work has given him a step up in the marketing field.

“You have to deal with real-world inventory loss,” he said. “It also helps with learning how to communicate with your superiors. That’s something they don’t teach you in college.”