Journal: Careers 101

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Fall 2003 l Capital University Journal
Careers 101
Through internships, thousands of Sac State students take job ‘test-drives’
by Laurie Hall
Photos by Sherry Mark

Abby Trott, intern at KOVR 13 television in Sacramento.

Sandeep Goyal won’t graduate from Sac State until December, but he has already helped a federal agency implement a complex computer database. As an intern with WIC, a nutrition program for women, infants and children, Goyal got the chance to put his business training to work, acting as the liaison between the technical staff and management.

He’s one of thousands of Sac State students gaining real-world experience through internships.

Internships give students a chance to dip their toes in the work pool before taking the post-graduation plunge. They also allow students to apply the skills and knowledge from the classroom in a workplace setting, giving Sac State students a crucial edge in the job market.

Evelin Zepeda (left), Juan Mendoza and Alma Prado, interns with CAMP Scholars.

Political freshmen

As California’s Capital University, Sac State has long been a place where students can get practical experience in government while they’re earning a degree.

Now a group of freshmen in the College Assistance Migrant Program are getting into the act in just their first year of college. Through a new program called CAMP Scholars, the students are working at internships in the Legislature, district Congressional offices and non-profit organizations.

The students work about 15 hours a week and receive a $2,500 scholarship at the end of their service. There are 40 CAMP Scholars this year, up from 14 in the first year, and some are placed with businesses as well.

“I had thought about politics some before I started this, but now I’m much more interested,” says Claudia Ramos of Watsonville. She spent last year interning at the State Capitol in the offices of Assemblymember Simon Salinas. “I really realize now how much the bills being considered can affect me.”

For Monica Velazquez of Arbuckle, and Juan Mendoza of French Camp, the program was a chance to learn the adage that “all politics is local.”

Velazquez worked in the district offices of Congressional Rep. Doug Ose and Mendoza worked in the district offices of U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Their work included answering constituent calls and letters, and going to community events.

Jessica Ramirez of Yuba City, meanwhile, interned in the offices of attorney Omar Gonzalez.

“I’ve always known I wanted to be a lawyer,” Ramirez says. “Gonzalez has taught me a lot that isn’t taught in law school—communicating with clients, being polite, seeing different perspectives. It has been a really good experience.”

Students also worked for the United Farmworkers Union, Univision, the State Firefighter Association—even with the Sac State student government.

“I want these students to understand they can help the overall community—to know they can be leaders,” says Marcos Sanchez, director of CAMP. “Whatever they learn about politics directly is a plus, but not the main purpose, which is teaching them that they can be leaders.”

CAMP is a federally funded program that helps first-year students from migrant and seasonal farm worker backgrounds succeed in college. It offers about 80 students each year such services as assistance with housing, academic advising, tutoring—and now, an internship program that helps financially.

The funding to start CAMP Scholars came from the employees of EdFund and the Hispanic Scholarship Program. Last year, the EdFund employees decided to commit $15,000 from their spring golf tournament fund-raiser to the cause, and the Hispanic Scholarship Program provided two-to-one matching funds.

This year, the EdFund employees are doubling their donation, leading to a doubled contribution from the Hispanic Scholarship Program.

CAMP Scholars is just the latest Sac State program to take advantage of the University’s location in the state capital. Among others are the competitive Capital Fellows Program, which places more than 60 graduate students in paid staff positions in state government, and the Sacramento Semester Program, which offers undergraduate internships in government.

In fact, Sanchez says he expects the CAMP Scholars program to get more students excited about opportunities in politics, and become a bridge to one of the other programs.

Details: (916) 278-7241 or www.csus.edu/camp.

“Having relevant work experience is especially important in this economy,” says Candace McGee, manager of the internship program in the campus Career Center. “It’s tough to get a job without one. Employers are looking for more than just a degree—they are looking for the whole package.”

Recent surveys show the availability of internships is among the top items of interest to parents and students when selecting a university. Close to 60 percent of students at Sac State have participated, or plan to participate, in an internship.

Maybe that’s why the University is home to the largest cooperative education program in the state, providing students with paid work experience that expands on their career plans.

“We work with students to find work assignments that relate to their field of study,” says Larry Hill, director of Sac State’s co-op program. “It’s a chance for students to be exposed to a career they might be interested in exploring.” In the 2002-2003 academic year co-op placed 622 students with more than 200 employers.

Hill stresses, “It’s real experience. We look at interns as a professional person in training. We want them to get experience working in the real world, to be exposed to what takes place.”

That opportunity is what brought Sandeep Goyal to his internship with WIC. “I wanted to get managerial experience,” he says. “I have lots of technical experience but wanted to see how to work in an actual environment under deadline.”

As part of this experience, Goyal, a graduate student in management information science, was the “translator” between the technical staff and management in launching a database to streamline the delivery of food to participants. Once that task was over, the agency tapped him to supervise a group of fellow interns working the bugs out of a new software program.

Working for a federal program with 82 agencies and 600 local sites also gave Goyal firsthand insight into an all-too-common work experience. “There’s a lot of politics,” he says. “You can’t learn about that in school. The real world is a lot different than a class project.”

The co-op program’s Hill agrees that while internships are generally a positive experience, part of hands-on training is learning that sometimes there will be challenges. “Classrooms subtract out the fuzziness of the real world,” he says. He cites the example of an electrical engineering student who spent part of his internship working as a telephone operator because of a strike at the company. “That’s what a real-world work environment is like. It’s not a controlled environment like at a university.”

The reverse is also true—internships can make the classroom experience more relevant, showing students where they can tweak their studies to serve their future career.

Self-proclaimed “perpetual intern” Nathan Chrisman, who is working on his fourth internship with Intel, says the experience plays a role in his classroom life.

The internships have allowed the graduate student in electrical engineering to work in a number of areas, which helped him decide to concentrate on circuit design. “It helped refine my coursework. I know what I want to study,” he says. “It’s made school more appropriate, so much more applicable.”

Chrisman says his more than two years of on-the-job training are a huge advantage. “It kind of slows down the graduation process but the benefits are more than worth it.” Among those benefits has been help in funding his education. “I have virtually zero student loans,” he says.

As it did with Chrisman, internships help students clarify their career choice. Or even go in another direction. “A student may go into an internship with one major and come out gung ho for another,” says the Career Center’s McGee. “It’s a good way to decide if they like the work associated with a particular field, especially for undeclared students. If they are on the fence trying to decide between two majors, an internship can help them make a decision.”

That’s the kind of choice facing Carolyn Abellera. A junior majoring in psychology and child development, Abellera is leaning toward a career in counseling. Along the way she’s taking advantage of her internship—helping run the Homework Center at Martin Luther King Library—to try out her psychology training.

“I learn a lot from working in the program. It’s really good to get to see what I’m studying in action,” she says.

As part of the after-school and summer program, she and the other interns teach manners, build study habits and boost reading skills. But sometimes children arrive angry over something that happened during the day or with problems at home. Then Abellera tries out the preparation she received back in the Sac State classroom. “I get to test my psychological skills,” she says. She’s even used her experiences for a paper she wrote on aggression in children.

Carolyn Abellara, intern at Martin Luther King Library Homework Project in Sacramento.

For other students, an internship’s appeal is in trying something brand-new. Recreation and leisure studies major Jason McKee decided to take his background in commercial recreation one step—and one ocean—further. He spent his summer on a Navy base in Sasebo, Japan running a day camp for the children of military families.

In his position with the U.S. Navy Morale, Wellness and Recreation program, McKee helped develop and put in place a 10-week camp for 5- to 10-year-olds.

In addition to dealing with the ups and downs of developing a new program while adjusting to being in a foreign country, McKee says he also learned about working with children. And working with them at a time many were dealing with emotions of having one or both of their parents leave for deployment.

“We were there if kids needed to talk,” he says. The value of the camp as a distraction was brought home to him toward the end of his stay when a usually upbeat camper came in looking sad. “He told me that his dad, who had just come back to base two days earlier, would be leaving again. I sat down with him and listened. Then I told him, ‘Let’s try to have a good time here at camp,’ which seemed to help.”

Nathan Chrisman, intern
at Intel in Folsom.

McKee’s stint had the added bonus of allowing him to experience another part of the world. “Five years ago I would never have thought that I would’ve gone to Japan. Now I want to see more.”

In many cases the internships turn into full-time employment. Recreation and leisure studies professor Tony Sheppard reports that at the California Department of Tourism this summer, one student even had a former Sac State intern as a her boss.

An internship experience in the newsroom at television station KOVR paid similar dividends for communication studies major Abby Trott. Though she still has a year of school left, Trott’s work in the newsroom helped her land a job as production assistant.

“The internship opened doors,” she says. And the variety of the work she was able to do is helping narrow her focus in her broadcasting aspirations. Trott says she got to try a little of everything—running the assignment desk, going out with reporters to cover stories, working on special assignments and writing copy. “That was what was cool about doing an internship here. They asked me ‘What do you want to do?’ You get to learn about whatever you want,” she says.

Jason McKee, intern at U.S. Navy Morale, Wellness and Recreation program in Sasebo, Japan.

Trott says the experience went beyond helping her land a job. “The mentoring here has taught me so much,” she says. “It showed me this is where I want to be.”

The University’s location in the heart of state government allows outstanding opportunities to intern at the Capitol. Two longstanding Sac State programs—Capital Fellows and Sacramento Semester—place scores of students in positions with legislators, the judiciary, the governor’s office, state agencies and even lobbyists.

Not only do the students get a sneak peek behind the government curtain, but many end up landing jobs. As many as half the offices in the California Legislature are staffed by alumni of the Capital Fellows program.

Sandeep Goyal, intern at WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program in Sacramento

For some disciplines, completing an internship is a condition of graduation. For instance, recreation and leisure studies undergraduate students are required to complete a minimum of 400 hours of supervised internship for graduation, as well as demonstrate a prerequisite of 600 hours of related work experience.

Disciplines requiring licensure, such as nursing, teaching, counseling and speech pathology and audiology, also have mandatory field experience requirements.

Help wanted
The University is always looking for additional placement opportunities for student interns. For information on hiring a Sac State intern, call the Cooperative Education program at (916) 278-7234 or the Career Center at (916) 278-6231.

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