“Otherwise known as life” is more than a snappy tag line on Beloit College admissions materials. It also refers to one of the College’s core beliefs: that students benefit from meaningful experiences in the real world. One way students get those experiences is through the College’s internship program.
I inadvertently learned about the program last spring when I joined the board of directors of Family Promise, a grassroots nonprofit agency in Phoenix, Ariz. A transitional shelter program for homeless families with children, the agency was confronting a crisis with the loss of its executive director. As board members, we knew Family Promise had a great program model, and we were determined to help it succeed, but the agency needed more volunteers and resources.
As we searched for a new director, we also explored the possibility of hiring interns. We contacted Arizona State University but met a wall of red tape and were unable to find a match. I called Angela Davis, director of Beloit’s Field and Career Services (FACS) office, and inquired about listing an internship at the College. Within 24 hours, we had posted the opening and received several responses. By the next week, I had interviewed and selected Ashley Vancil, a sophomore psychology and sociology major from Ripon, Wis. She was eager and excited to work at Family Promise over the summer.
“I was looking for work where I could help others,” Ashley says. “But I was nervous about being so far from home—I’d never been west of Minnesota.”
Frankly, we were a bit nervous about how we were going to house and transport Ashley in a city with little mass transportation. In the end, she spent the summer as the guest of a board member and used a spare car belonging to my family.
It was all worth it. Ashley was a terrific asset and made me proud of Beloit College. She was bright, flexible, and quick to pick up on concepts and tasks. Under the guidance of our newly hired director, a nonprofit leader with 40 years of experience working with the poor and the homeless, Ashley helped develop a donor database and wrote a number of reports to assist our social worker with case management.
“I gained a sense of independence, and I grew as a person,” Ashley says of the experience. “I have more of an understanding of what I want to do with my future and have become more interested in the issue of homelessness. I hope to focus on this issue in graduate school.”
This was not my first experience with Beloit interns. As a technology executive, my husband, Gene Banucci’65 (chemistry), had sponsored several Beloit chemistry-major interns over the years. We were pleased that these students lived up to and exceeded our expectations. Even when stacked up against interns from MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and other highly regarded technical schools, the Beloit students differentiated themselves with their strong global perspective and ability to communicate clearly.
| Photo by: Greg Anderson |
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| Ashley Vancil’09 landed an
internship with a human
services organization thanks
to Phyllis Wolff Banucci’65,
who serves on its board. |
Rooted in the Beloit Plan
The Beloit College internship program evolved as a part of the Beloit Plan, explains Davis, referring to Beloit’s former year-round curriculum. Among other things, the plan required all students to complete a field term. “Its framework developed from having students engaged in communities worldwide to explore, learn, teach, develop, and apply their skills and knowledge in environments outside of the traditional classroom,” Davis says.
In the early 1980s, the College adopted internship program standards that were consistent with best practices in experiential learning. These standards suggest that an intern’s learning is maximized not only through the experience itself, but also through intentional goal-setting and reflection before, during, and after the experience.
“We want students to learn how to deal with change through experiences that will give them a deeper understanding of their field and of what they are learning in the classroom,” says Davis.
FACS manages the internship program and sets the requirements students must fulfill to have internships noted on their transcripts. FACS also serves as a resource to educate, guide, and advise students as they embark on internships or job searches.
“We do not get students jobs,” says Davis. “We provide tools, such as access to resources, and teach networking skills and interviewing techniques, then we help students make connections with employers and alumni who have agreed to serve as mentors and career resources.”
Generally about 150 to 200 students are involved in the program each year. Alumni, parents, and friends of the College who host students in a variety of fields are important to maintaining a successful program. They have a unique understanding of Beloit’s educational goals and a commitment to student learning. More connections with alumni who have internship opportunities are always being sought to keep the program vital.
Most students seek paid internships, but these are not always easy to find. Since more than 85 percent of Beloit College students receive financial aid—and many internships are off-campus and incur living and transportation costs—FACS uses multiple resources to seek funding to support or supplement students’ costs while they pursue low or non-paying internships. A few individual alumni and a couple of class gifts—including those from the classes of 1986 and 1996—have created fellowships to help support students while they work as interns.
Types of Beloit College internships run the gamut, from placements with museums and festivals to corporations and private businesses. Students and alumni can look for a match through a variety of resources. For example, FACS maintains an online database with internship, job, and fellowship opportunities where alumni can post available jobs that students may search. There is also a career network of alumni, parents, and friends of the College who have agreed to be mentors, provide job-shadowing experiences, and offer other assistance to students. More than 1,100 professionals around the world currently participate in the network.
| Photo by: Heratch Photography |
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| Nii Tetteh’02, right, interned at Barrington Partners with founder and managing partner Hubbard
Garber’81. After graduating from Beloit, Tetteh joined the firm. |
From Ghana to Boston
by way of Beloit
Hubbard Garber’81, who double-majored in English composition and economics at Beloit, is the founder and managing director of Barrington Partners. The Boston-based firm specializes in consulting, research, and investment banking services to the domestic and international financial services industry.
Nii Tetteh, a 2002 graduate from Ghana who majored in economics and management, interned at Barrington Partners while a student and continues to work there today.
He used FACS as a resource to identify the kind of internship he wanted, participated in interview training, searched FACS’ online resources, and consulted the office’s alumni contact list for workplaces that interested him. Tetteh also attended Econ Day in Chicago, an annual event sponsored by the College’s department of economics and management, which brings together current students and alumni for the express purpose of networking.
While at Econ Day, Tetteh worked on connecting with alumni who were in the financial services industry. “The discussions at this conference helped me make contacts and witness how my academic studies relate to the business world,” he says.
He contacted Garber and ended up landing a paid internship at Barrington Partners. Because he had a brother living in Boston and could use the city’s public transit system, housing and transportation were not an issue.
What did he get out of his internship?
“I learned the hedge fund business and fund accounting systems. It was a huge learning curve,” Tetteh says, adding that he believes the broad range of courses he took at Beloit, and the number of papers he had to write on subjects outside his core interests, helped him develop flexibility. “I discovered that writing a paper seemingly every week helps you do research,” he says. “I was totally prepared to know how and where to look for information and then write about it.”
Tetteh’s positive internship experience was confirmed by an offer to join Barrington Partners as a regular employee after graduation. Five years later, he continues to demonstrate his flexibility by wearing many hats at the small firm of 12 employees.
Garber says his firm participates in Beloit’s internship program as a way of giving back. “Beloit was good to me,” Garber says. “Not only did I get a good education, but people went out of their way to help me find the scholarships and loans I needed to attend. I’ve been grateful for the College’s willingness to help me, so I’ve stayed involved. I’ve hired several Beloit interns, even though we prefer to employ people with several years of experience.”
Garber says that like many smaller firms, Barrington Partners lacks a formal internship program. This means interns learn on the fly—they are thrown into the office routine—and if they are inquisitive, thoughtful, resourceful, and creative problem-solvers, they will learn a great deal. “If they sit around and wait to be told what to do,” says Hubbard, “they don’t do well here.”
Hubbard says he likes to assign interns a strategic project, along with commonplace tasks. “We like to give them something to put their head around, something they have to think about,” he says. “Some are brilliant, and others simply don’t get it.”
In the end, Hubbard says he hopes his interns get a sense of whether or not they like the industry and the business. “If they are interested in pursuing work in our industry after graduation, I give them lots of possible contacts.”
| Photo by: Thomas Guschl |
 |
| Nadith Rahman’06, center, is
surrounded by student interns for
the Beloit International Film
Festival. From left: Stefan
Catoiu’07, Antonia Predovan’09,
Jessica Sisk’07, and Shannon
Carmody’07. |
Behind the Scenes at an
International Film Festival
The Beloit International Film Festival, commonly known as BIFF, is an active internship program that sidesteps housing and transportation issues for most students.
A two-year-old festival with offices a block off campus, BIFF has been a wildly successful event, screening 100 films from 26 countries in 2007, drawing thousands of people to Beloit, and featuring popular events that allow filmgoers to rub elbows with filmmakers.
A partnership between Beloit College and the Beloit community, BIFF receives primary financial support from The Hendricks Group (Ken Hendricks is a member of the College’s board of trustees) and is presented in association with the College.
Like many nonprofits, BIFF has great potential for interns.
“I love this festival and want to help it grow,” says Nadith Rahman’06, BIFF’s director of operations—and a former intern himself for the organization. “We have a limited budget, so I’ve used FACS to identify new interns,” he adds.
Although they are unpaid, BIFF interns work on a variety of interesting projects: from reviewing films to preparing contracts, and from helping to write the program to scheduling travel for filmmakers.
Rahman, from Dhaka, Bangladesh, was a double-major in international relations and business administration at Beloit. He hired four interns for last January’s festival.
“We look for diversity because we want to bring a global viewpoint to our operation,” Rahman says. “And I don’t mean only cultural diversity, but diversity in point of view. So I don’t look only for film majors or business majors. As long as a student has some interest in the business of film, they could qualify to be an intern here.”
Other competencies Rahman looks for include basic communication skills—including writing and computer skills—flexibility, and an international perspective.
Those skills helped senior Stefan Catoiu, a BIFF intern from Bucharest, Romania, solve a problem. The festival had accepted a film from Denmark for screening, but the copy they received had no English subtitles. Stefan, who had studied in Denmark for a semester through a Beloit study abroad program, found that a copy of the film with English subtitles was at a library in Denmark. He had no qualms about calling to request that a copy be sent to the film festival.
Jessica Sisk, a senior psychology major from South Bend, Ind., also joined BIFF as an intern this year after previously holding an internship as a filmmaker with a video production company in her hometown.
“My internships have helped me realize how much business is involved with film,” she says. “When you are young and creative, all you want to do is tell a creative story, and you don’t realize how you also have to be a good businessperson to be a successful filmmaker.”
With interns already lined up for next year’s film festival, Rahman is working on identifying scholarship support so that he can pay them.
Phyllis Wolff Banucci’65 majored in anthropology at Beloit and then spent 20 years as a human resources executive focusing on change management. In this role, she created an intern program at ATMI, Inc., a semiconductor materials company she and her husband, Gene Banucci’65, founded. She is a member of the Admissions and Student Affairs Committee of the Beloit College board of trustees. The Banuccis live in Danbury, Conn., and Scottsdale, Ariz., and have three grown children. One son, Ted, graduated from Beloit in 1995.
