Internships Help New Grads Celebrate with Jobs
This summer, many 2005 graduates landed jobs and embarked on careers with a bit of experience under their belts thanks to the CBAPP internship program, which has received more attention and grown markedly under the guidance of Dean James Strong and Internship Coordinator Carolyn Harris. 

A formal internship program has been in place for 30 years, but when Strong came on as dean in July 2003, growing the program became a major push. “The Dean has made it one of his top priorities,” says Harris. “Whenever he’s out meeting people in the business community, he makes it known that the college has an internship program and that we are always looking to expand it.” 

“It’s been at the top of my list because most of what we teach in CBAPP is practitioner and professional degrees,” says Strong. “In order to fully understand the complexities of that practice, you need to get out there and see how it works in the real world. For example, management can seem pretty simple in a book, but when you have to set priorities and there are more things to do than time to do them, and you face frequent interruption and uncertainty it’s not so easy.  Also, internships really help integrate various disciplines covered within our majors, which tend to get isolated from each other as we teach them course by course.  Organizations tend to have much more complex opportunities and problems, which force students to think more big picture.” 

With the program run from within departments, students have taken advantage of opportunities in human resources, management, public administration, criminal justice, accounting and several other fields with top companies and organizations such as MTV, Boeing, American Idol, and Los Angeles County.  

Students receive credit for one class while also getting paid; the companies receive a short-term labor supply, with the added benefit that they can gauge whether the intern would be suited for a full-time position following graduation should one become available. This summer alone, 2005 graduates who completed internships accepted jobs with companies including Chaffey Federal Credit Union, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, El Camino College, the U.S. Marshals Service, and several others.  

“For me, my internship opened the door to a huge opportunity,” says Tsebaot Rediet, an accounting grad who interned in Boeing’s Finance Division during the spring semester and will continue her work as a full-time cost analyst in August. “It not only gave me a sense of what I would do in that position, but also an understanding of the whole picture of how the company worked. If it wasn’t for that internship, I would not have had the opportunity to get hired.”